GPC for EMX, objects, gperf_(re)

Wed, 13 Sep 1995 17:12:49 +0300 (EET DST)

On Wed, 13 Sep 1995, Arcadio Alivio Sincero wrote:

> On Wed, 13 Sep 1995, Peter Gerwinski wrote:
> 
> > 1)  I am thinking about porting GPC to the DOS / OS/2 EMX environment.  Does
> >     anybody already work on that task or has even finished it?
> 
> 
> 	I was thinking about downloading the source this weekend and try
> to recompile it under EMX/GCC myself.  But since you want to do it, I
> might as well wait until you're done :-).  It should be rather straight
> forward to recompile GPC under the EMX environment, shouldn't it?  I had
> problems recompiling GPC under DOS and DJGPP (actually, I never did manage
> to recompile it under DOS but only because I switched to OS/2 and dumped
> DOS so I never really tried hard enough :-)), because of DOS's 8.3
> filename limitation and some of the GPC source files have long filenames. 
> Under OS/2 and HPFS this shouldn't be a problem. Isn't the makefile for 
> GPC in "standard" UNIX make file format?  You could just get GNU Make, I 
> guess.  (I use IBM's NMAKE myself, which is why I ask).  


	Hi folks.

	I think gpc has been succesfully compiled and run in both the
	dos and os/2 environments (although I don't even know what emx is,
	and I am not sure I even want to know that :-)

	I think I am able to get the dos binaries and start distributing 
	them if someone would like to avoid the problems in compiling
	gpc under dos. Are people interested in binaries?

	gpc makefiles are quite standard, they should not require any 
	specific makefile features, except the VPATH variable, which tells
	where the make program should look for sources. Gnu make is fine.
	Most other new make programs are also fine.

> > 2)  I would like to know more about when there will be Object Pascal extensions
> >     in GPC, and how they will look like.  (E.g. "class" instead of Borland's
> >     "object"?  Does "override" mean what I know as "virtual"?)

	GPC parser only knows the object pascal reserved words, but there 
	is no semantics to implement the language. However, given that
	the Gnu C++ compiler implements very similar features, I think
	it is quite possible to implement the object pascal compiler
	with gpc as starting point. I thought of doing that once, but
	unfortunately (for gpc) I don't have time for it now.

	I know I said I would try to merge gpc to the standard distribution
	during the summer, but I was not able to spend time with gpc
	during the summer at all. Sorry for that. What I am able to do
	sometime in the near future is to upgrade to 2.7 gcc code,
	that should not be a major problem (I hope).

> 	I thought GPC is supposed to be an Extended Pascal and ISO Pascal
> compiler only .. i.e. it follows "official" standards. Is Object Pascal
> standardized?  You *might* be able to consider Borland somewhat of a
> standard ... there are already two Pascal compilers for OS/2 that comply with
> the Borland "standard" .. Speed Pascal/2 and Virtual Pascal.  (Also, the
> latest version of Speed/2, v. 1.5, is supposed to have the "Delphi
> extenstions", i.e. Object Pascal, in it ...). 

	I think the object pascal draft is not going to change anymore, which
	means it is going to be standardized some point in the (near)
	future. I have a copy of the last draft, and it does look very
	interesting.

	Also, I am never going to do the Borland compatibility mode 
	myself, but I have no objections to include those changes in gpc 
	mainline *if* someone would write them first and not just talk
	about it. Please do, there are many programmers out there who
	really seem to like borland, and it would be very useful for the
	project to be compatible with borland.
	
> 	Anyhow, if you're gonna add the Object Pascal and Borland
> extensions yourself, that'd be pretty cool.  Having a free Pascal compiler
> that follows 4 standards (ISO Pascal, Extended Pascal, Borland, and Object
> Pascal) and is portable across several platforms would be awesome.  I wish
> I could help, but unfortunatly I don't know squat about writing compilers
> ... but I'd be happy to be a beta tester 'tho :-). 

	Yes, it would be cool. But also remember that gpc is not
	quite finished yet, it still requires lots of hacking to implement
	the missing features...

							Juki
							jtv@hut.fi

Jukka Virtanen (jtv@kampi.hut.fi)