Re: [Cobolforgcc-devel] Re: gnubol: which list, and cobol.el

[Tim Josling <tej@melbpc.org.au>]

Abbrevs
*******

I didn't realize the abbrevs weren't implemented. Maybe just put
a comment in about this.

I would like the common statement starting verbs like GO TO (just
kidding), MOVE, PERFORM, COMPUTE, ADD/SUBTRACT/MULTIPLY/DIVIDE,
IF and the respective END-Xs, maybe also something for data
division like $n -> 0n xxx PIC X(1) USAGE DISPLAY, EXIT
PROCEDURE, DISPLAY, STOP RUN.

Two Projects
*************

Yes I do want to maintain COBOL For GCC and GNU COBOL2C as two
separate projects. This is dues to the different approaches taken
by the two projects:

- Use GCC back end vs generating C code.
- Extreme programming (testing) used in COBOL4GCC
- Stricter approach to standards on COBOL4GCC
- Using Source Forge - Source forge offers a really good
infrastructure for running an open source project

GNU COBOL2C has been inactive for some time. But it is not for me
to say that the project is over. It has achieved a lot especially
in terms of getting the parsing issues resolved, but nothing has
been happening for a while. 

My hope is that it will work like this. People will join
COBOL4GCC and contribute code, tests and documentation. We will
have a viable COBOL subset soon, to allow COBOL programmers to
contribute to the project. As momentum grows, more and more
developers and users join in. Soon we have it all done. We
leverage the experiences of the earlier free COBOL projects
(cobcy, cobol2c) and share code with Tiny COBOL (this is possible
especially in the complex runtime such as sort/merge - I'd love
to write that but I need to concentrate in the parsing and GCC
interface).

In 17 months COBOL4GCC has accumulated 39,000 lines of code
(6,000 lines of Ted Seward's code are not checked in yet), far
more than any other free COBOL project. I know that LOC is an
imperfect measure, but if you use the same language and have
similar levels of documentation and use similarly skilled
programmers it is a fair comparison. While functionally it is a
baby, the 39,000 lines represent all the hard problems solved. So
we can move forward at a rapid rate from this sound base. 

I would urge anyone wishing to contribute to register themselves
to www.sourceforge.net and let me know your ID, then I can put
you in the project and we can track tasks and bugs etc, and give
you CVS write access in due course.

Tim Josling


Matthew Vanecek wrote:
> 
> Duly noted.  abbrevs were never implemented--I guess the original
> developer never got to it.  I will, soon.  The thing to decide is,
> what's important enough to include as an abbrev?  Consider opinions
> solicited...

> Are you wanting to maintain gnu-cobol and cobolforgcc as two seperate
> projects?  How's that gonna work?

> Matthew Vanecek

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