Re: COBOL support in GDB

COBOL you must be kidding!



On 8/20/2025 5:17 PM, Robert Dubner wrote:
> My name is Bob Dubner.  I live in upstate New York, in the United States.
> I work for the Symas Corporation, which has an interest in COBOL-based
> systems.  For the last several years I have been working along with my
> colleagues Marty Herman and Jim Lowden to develop a COBOL front end for
> the GCC compiler collection.
>
>   
>
> That front end, with much gratefully received assistance and support from
> the GCC community during the incorporation phase, was released back in
> March as part of GCC-15.1.
>
>   
>
> So, with GCC now able to compile COBOL, a natural next step is the
> capability of debugging COBOL code.
>
>   
>
> About three years ago, we forked binutils-gdb on
> https://gitlab.cobolworx.com/COBOLworx/gdb-cobol.  That's where I have
> been developing support in GDB for the COBOL language as implemented in
> GCC's COBOL front end.  I regularly merge the master branch of
> git://sourceware.org/git/binutils-gdb.git into our fork, most recently
> today.
>
>   
>
> I have the COBOL-aware debugger actually working.  Somebody who can
> navigate the multiple gates of
>
>   
>
> 1) Access to an Ubuntu 22 or 24 system,
>
> 2) A willingness to download and install the leading-edge COBOL compiler
> from https://gitlab.cobolworx.com/COBOLworx/gcc-cobol/-/packages,
>
> 3) A matching willingness to download and install the leading-edge
> GDB-COBOL debugger from
> https://gitlab.cobolworx.com/COBOLworx/gdb-cobol/-/packages
>
> 4) Actually caring enough about COBOL to go through steps 1 through 3
>
>   
>
> can then use the resulting installed gcobol compiler to compile a COBOL
> program and then use gdb-cobol to debug it.  My intent, so far, is that
> GDB users will not be surprised by what ordinary GDB commands do when
> debugging a COBOL program.
>
>   
>
> I am writing here because it is my belief that we can at least start
> talking about incorporating my cobol_language work into GDB.
>
>   
>
> It involves eight new files in the gdb directory, all named
> "cobol-<something>".  There are some changes to code elsewhere in the gdb
> subdirectory.
>
>   
>
> I anticipate that there will be a fair amount of polite interaction about
> some of my changes that will, nonetheless, come from a place of "Why in
> the name of all that is holy did you do THAT??!!"
>
>   
>
> The answers to those perfectly valid questions will be rooted in two
> places.
>
>   
>
> First, COBOL is weird.
>
>   
>
> Second, I didn't know any better.
>
>   
>
> So, I need guidance on how to proceed.  Perhaps I should come up with a
> patch that just installs the some of the cobol-xxx files, so that my work
> can be evaluated?  I am sure there will be questions, and comments, and
> protests that I will have to address.
>
>   
>
> Or what?
>
>   
>
> Thank you very much for your consideration.
>
>   
>
> Bob Dubner
>