Is there a COBC.EXE for V3.2

[Emmad]

I highly appreciate the development team's effort in making the GNU COBOL available. One of the things I don't really understand is why there is no COBC.EXE for Windows? Many developers (such as myself) don't know C++ and are least interested in building the compiler.... In the past, I somehow found a tool that generates or includes the COBC.EXE for version 3.1, I used it and it got me working in few minutes. Today, I tried to upgrade to 3.2, but did not know what to do!
Thank you.

[Simon Sobisch]

The newest development snapshot is made available via this link https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnucobol/files/gnucobol/nightly_snapshots/, which also includes Win32 binaries.

Mind that while 3.2 is "quite stable" it is still a development version. After it is on release candidate state (3.2rc1 is still expected September 2022) there won't be any changes to old code in it. In any case it is compatible back to 2.2, so you can just switch out the runtime or recompile some modules while leaving others as-is.
An when it is on "final" (some weeks later) it will also be available in more places.

[Emmad]

Thank you.

[Emmad]

I ran the cobc.exe from the above path after downloading and got the error:

I get the error even on
cobc -v

result:

d:\gnucobol64\share\gnucobol\config\default.conf:110: unknown configuration tag 'larger-redefines-ok'

I also used this line to compile and got the same above error

cobc C:\Users\egkareem\Downloads\c\R08.cbl -free -Wall -x -o C:\Users\egkareem\Downloads\c\R08.EXE

Thanks.

[Vincent (Bryan) Coen]

Yes it is outside the 8.3 format for files and there will be others -
assuming you are using simple DOS without fat 32 extensions etc.

Vince

@Simon is there a solution to this issue ?

On 27/08/2022 17:06, Emmad wrote:

I ran the cobc.exe from the above path after downloading and got the
error:

d:\gnucobol64\share\gnucobol\config\default.conf:110: unknown
configuration tag 'larger-redefines-ok'

I used this line to compile:
cobc C:\Users\egkareem\Downloads\c\R08.cbl -free -Wall -x -o
C:\Users\egkareem\Downloads\c\R08.EXE

Thanks.

[Emmad]

Not sure where to go from here. Also, I have got Windows Defender marking items as threats - I am using Windows 11.

Sample virus scan result:
https://files.fm/u/t6vfdazv9

[Simon Sobisch]

LOL, these are the MinGW binaries for Berkeley DB. Send an inquiry about false-positives if you like to; and if you ever want to verify "suspicious" files I suggest to do that via https://www.virustotal.com

[Emmad]

Thank you.

[Simon Sobisch]

So you have an environment setup which is not complete...
Easiest option is to directly click on "set_env.cmd" to start a GnuCOBOL environment or - if you call cobc (or executed modules) "directly" from somewhere do so, for example set_env.cmd cobc C:\Users\egkareem\Downloads\c\R08.cbl -free -Wall -x -o C:\Users\egkareem\Downloads\c\R08.EXE.

If you want to have this version installed as main GnuCOBOL version on your system you may opt to run set_env.cmd && set | findstr -i cob to see the necessary COB_xyz variables to setup via your OS configuration and the reminder to put the "bin" directory in PATH.

[Emmad]

Very well, the above worked. Many thanks.

[Chuck Haatvedt]

Emmad,

go to this link https://ci.appveyor.com/project/GitMensch/gnucobol-3-x-win32-posix

select the following

"Environment: BUILD_TYPE=MSYS, BUILD_BIN=C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\bin"

then select "Artifacts "

then select the "Mingw-binaries.zip"

[Emmad]

Thank you, I will give it a try - Actually the link is not working. I found the .exe from Simon's link.