[Cobolforgcc-devel] Re: COBOL for GCC

[Tim J. <te...@me...>]

Larry,

Good to hear from you. 90% of the work is the runtime, which is
where we need the most help. Depending on your interests there
are many different projects you could do.

A few things to be aware of:

Coding standards are the Free Software Foundation's coding
standards http://www.fsf.org/prep/standards_toc.html. The main
things are meaningful names, indenting style, no tabs, good
comments for every function.

Every code needs a test driver or test case. Usually you write
the test first and then write the code when you run the test and
it doesn't work. Tested code is useful but untested code is not. 

I am working on a COBOL subset at present. When this is done, we
can/will write some of the remaining compiler in COBOL.

It helps if you are using GCC, even better to be using linux, but
again not essential.

I assume you have read the documentation I have written to far.

In terms of the process:

It would really help if you register as a developer with source
forge http://www.sourceforge.net. Then we can track projects
using their task manager. It is not absolutely essential to do so
though.

Also if you could subscribe to the mailing list
cob...@so... and we can converse via the
list; that way there is a record of the design decisions and
specs etc.

Normally one of us comes up with a spec which is really the
function prototypes and any extra clarification that is needed.
Then write the tests and code, and then I check it in. 

Now for the fun bit - what to write. Here are some possibilities.

Speed up the existing 128 bit arithmetic routines; and add new
256 bit routines. Use the algirothms in 'The Art of Computer
Programming" by Knuth, or better algorithms if you can find them.

Implementations of some or all of the intrinsic functions. 

Implementation of sort/merge. Key requirement is effectively
unlimited size, greater than virtual memory. Knuth has lots on
this too.

Implementation of any of the COBOL file IO. 

Improve the emacs editing mode code (cobol.el).

There are many others...pick one.

Regards,
Tim Josling

(Larry Vandewalle is interested in contributing to COBOLforGCC.)