Re: [Cobolforgcc-devel] Build Process

[tim <te...@me...>]

> Re work on the build prcess

Tom,

Your work is useful because someone has to work out what's changed since
then and make the necessary changes. If it's not you it will be me. So
by your doing this it means when I get to working on the compiler proper
I will have a head start.

So it means the work is in parallel rather than serialised.

It is difficult because GCC is not very well documented, it's complex,
and it's inconsistent in the way things are done. It is though mostly a
lot better than it was 5 years ago, especially the documentation.

...I have the copy verb working now. The next step is the replace verb
which is largely a subset of copy. I have the parser for replace already
written and the actions as I mentioned are very similar to the existing
code for copy. 

This should take a few days to complete I think.

Then I need to to some retokenizing because the preprocessor lexical
structure differs somewhat from the main compiler's, and then I can
start work on the main compiler parser. I have the compiler lexical
analysis already working. 
The parser should take up to a week - I can reuse the bison grammar from
before. I just need to redo the actions.

Then there is some validation and cross-referencing of the created parse
tree.

This is a few days of work.

The I need to design the file format to pass to the gcc interface
routine. I need to write code to write (in lisp) the format and to read
it in C. That's a couple of days of work.

I am at a Linux conference most of next week. So I am probably about 3
weeks from starting work on the code generation using GCC.

I do appreciate your help, though it is always your decision whether
it's sustainable for you. I dropped work on the compiler for quite a few
years after my father died because I had to sort out some things and it
became very difficult to do both.

Tim Josling