Re: GNU Pascal is still kind of alive

On 5 Jan 2017 at 12:02, John L. Ries wrote:

> This discussion has been enormously encouraging.  We still haven't found
> anyone who is currently working on the compiler itself, but there are
> people making it avaiable, which is a start.

I think there first needs a consensus on what remains to be done on the 
compiler itself (i.e., other than making it compile with recent gcc 
releases), how to do it, and then identifying developer(s) that are 
able to do it. For the moment, the only known ones with the capacity 
are Peter G, Frank H, and Waldek H. With Peter and Frank having 
possibly bowed out, Waldek is possibly the last man standing. Does he 
want to do it? Does he have the time? Can Waldek try to assemble a team 
with sufficient knowledge of gcc internals (or that is willing and able 
to learn)? Is there anyone else out there? 

Which features are missing as far as standards compliance is concerned? 
It seems to me that the compiler is complete wrt ISO Standard Pascal. 
Some have referred to gaps in EP compliance (are these gaps deal 
breakers?). It might be helpful to have a complete list, with simple 
example code that should compile. 

Unless the compiler itself is going to be improved by any remaining 
fixing bugs and implementing the missing features, what would be the 
point of simply chasing gcc releases (a hairy and never-ending task)?

If we don't have a clear understanding of what needs to be done to the 
compiler itself and developers to do it, then I think the development 
effort might well be truly dead, and attention then might needs to 
focus on how to get the existing code (Waldek's latest) to compile on 
all desired platforms.
 
As far as compiling gpc is concerned (whether on Linux or Windows), I 
have never had any real issues. I simply stick with a gcc source base 
that I have found to be wholly unproblematic (which for me is 
gcc-3.4.5/6 for Windows and gcc-4.1.2 for Linux). 

Mac OSX seems to have major issues here, but it is probably nothing 
that cannot be solved by;
[a] suitably amending the gpc driver program (gpc.c) to pass on any 
needed arguments, or 
[b] by writing a custom collect2.c to replace the default collect2.c, 
and compiling it separately, or
[c] by writing your own os-hacks.h and putting in the include 
directory.

None of these options requires deep knowledge of C.

If anyone is interested, I have samples of [a], [b] and [c] which I use 
for Windows, to do things like dealing with Windows resource files 
where necessary, supplying some functionality that Windows does not 
have, and making certain that the gpc driver passes some specific 
directives (e.g., certain directory paths) to the compiler.

Best regards, The Chief
--------
Prof. Abimbola A. Olowofoyeku (The African Chief) 
web:  http://www.greatchief.plus.com/


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