appletonc

It is common in the mainframe world for the sort in a COBOL program to performed by special sort program, such as CA-SORT. I believe the term used is an exit routine Both gnucobol and gcsort are doing the same thing different syntax. The actual sort in gnucobol is perfomed by the run-tme. The sort parameters are defined in the COBOL source and in the generated C code. In gcsort the sort parameters are defined in the SORT syntax . The sort is dynamically defined in the C code. You could modify gcsort...

The error in the Debian and DSC files are minor syntax mistakes found in 3.2-3, 3.2-4, and well documented in Lintian - gnucobol3. Unfortunately, the maintainer has ignored these errors.

Most Linux users install packages. They do not build from code. I think it is the responsibility of those who release the gnucobol sources to ensure that they build correctly. If you check DEB and RPM that should cover the majority. For example gnucobol3 3.2, for Debian 13 and above, has the following patch. Index: gnucobol3-3.2/libcob/common.c Description: compiler found missing include file =================================================================== --- gnucobol3-3.2.orig/libcob/common.c...

On Debian 12 both libncurses-dev and libncurses5-dev point to libncurses6 6.4-4. The Build-Depends found in the dsc file, has a libncurses5-dev dependency, for Debian 12 and above. I think that the correct dependency should be libncurses-dev. I will try to create the dsc and debian files for gnucobol3 3.2 for Debian 12.

It appears that libncurses5-dev is a listed dependency for cobc but libncurses6 is used for both compiler and run-time. And libncurses5-dev has been replaced by libncurses-dev . Very confusing, but my mistake.

There is a problem with gnucobol3 curses dependency on Debian 13 and above. The Debian package Debian 13 (trixie) gnucobol3 (3.2-3) depends on libncurses5. Beginning with Debian 13, the libncurses5 package not available, and has been replaced by libncurses6. Not sure if this problem specific to Debian or effects other distributions.

I think the error is related to libncurses5. The libncurses5 has been replaced by libncursesw5 (wide character support). I had a similar problem with trying to build CobCurses . It is best to download the sources and build, install a Debian package Build Packages From Source In Debian [Easy Step-By-Step Guide]. The following command will download and unpack the sources for gnucobol3 on Debian 12 ( bookworm). sudo apt source gnucobol3 Reading package lists... Done ... Need to get 2,221 kB of source...

The best GUI based screen painter I have found is CobolGEN - Cobol Program Builder with Screen Painter . Unfortunately the home page link seams to be broken. My interest is to have a screen painter program which can import-export several formats such as CICS BMS, COBOL copybook, GUI, some screen definition format.