Has anyone tried to compile gnuCOBOL to WebAssembly?
I'm working on a new COBOL project and we need a compiler that's compatible with WASM so that we can have a compiler embedded into a webapp.
Also, I took a quick look at the code and saw that there was a bunch of platform/OS specific code, I don't have a lot of experience with C, but since WASM is supposed to be crossplatform would it be possible to remove the platform specific code and have a "stripped down" version that can only be compiled to WASM?
Sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm a frontend dev without much experience with C.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
The main question is: What should be part of the WebApp? If the answer is "only the running COBOL code" or "only the syntax checks and possibly the translation COBOL -> (internally used) C" then this would be possible, otherwise you'd need to have a C compiler that can handle GnuCOBOL and its big generated intermediate C code files in WebAssembly, too; or replace code generation to output WebAssembly instead of C (not impossible but a huge task).
Concerning the "platform specific parts" - WebAssembly would likely be an additional one where it could not be part of an already existing one (like clang/llvm for example, at least from what I read using emscripten and llvm was the easiest way two years ago so it is possibly still true today).
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Has anyone tried to compile gnuCOBOL to WebAssembly?
I'm working on a new COBOL project and we need a compiler that's compatible with WASM so that we can have a compiler embedded into a webapp.
Also, I took a quick look at the code and saw that there was a bunch of platform/OS specific code, I don't have a lot of experience with C, but since WASM is supposed to be crossplatform would it be possible to remove the platform specific code and have a "stripped down" version that can only be compiled to WASM?
Sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm a frontend dev without much experience with C.
The main question is: What should be part of the WebApp? If the answer is "only the running COBOL code" or "only the syntax checks and possibly the translation COBOL -> (internally used) C" then this would be possible, otherwise you'd need to have a C compiler that can handle GnuCOBOL and its big generated intermediate C code files in WebAssembly, too; or replace code generation to output WebAssembly instead of C (not impossible but a huge task).
Concerning the "platform specific parts" - WebAssembly would likely be an additional one where it could not be part of an already existing one (like clang/llvm for example, at least from what I read using emscripten and llvm was the easiest way two years ago so it is possibly still true today).