Re: [TUHS] changes in C compilers

[Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>]

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On Sat, Aug 25, 2018 at 2:38 PM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:

> The APS work started in the summer of 1979. See
> http://www.eprg.org/papers/202paper.pdf
> and see some of the other stuff at
> http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/202/index.html.
>
> I think that's after V7 was released.
>
Ok, so that was clearly the first ditroff.

Typesetter C *must have been the original troff release* which was separate
from V6; but I don't remember what all was in the release.   Looking at the
v6 distribution tape I have, the assembler versions of roff and nroff was
there; but not troff.   V7 clearly shows the original troff in the sources.


The order I remember is this ... V5, V6, Patches, Typesetter C, TS, V7 ...
 although TS and Typesetter might be switched but I know we got Typesetter
C before we got V7.    Ted brought TS to us (in EE) and I thought that had
the new compiler.   CS got TS from us in EE.    But somebody at CMU had
wanted troff because we had the XGP in CS that we drive with Scribe (I want
to say that was EE but I don't remember who was involved).   So I have
memory of somebody hacking on the compiler at some point.  The POR (which
if ever came to bear at CMU was after I left) was some type of hacking on
troff to support the XGP.  Given the time Aharon points out, it might have
been direct support it or it might have been something like vcat - I was
not involved.   Klone might remember more of that.

Clearly from the time, ditroff did not yet exist.   The more I think about
it, Brian K actually might know some of the story.  Scribe was Brian Reid's
PhD Thesis and Brian K was on Reid's committee at the time and I'm guessing
could somehow have been mixed up.

FWIW: Compiler hacking at CMU stands out in my mind because of the 11/40e
had CSAV/CRET instructions.  The CS versions of the compilers generated
code using that, because they had 11/40e with CMU WCS options.  The rest of
us in EE, BioMed, Mellon Institute etc were running on 11/34's or 11/34A
which could not handle those binaries (no WCS).   So I personally spent
time tracking the CS versions of the compiler and bringing things to EE,
trying to keep thing clean.  That was one of my jobs at the time.

That's fairly sure of the order, because we had Typesetter C at CMU in the
Summer '78 when were we negotiating the 'university' commercial V7 license
with Al Arms [which I was personally mixed up -- the finally
ruling/agreement was license one system as a commercial system at the $20K
fee and a university, could then use UNIX for back office and commercial
style uses like Industry.  Al did not require the $5K second CPU stuff from
the Universities, if they got a single $20K license; everyone was happy -
details off list or another thread if you want them; although I will say
CMU was first in early '79, followed by Case in late 1979].

So again, I try to date by things I know are fixed in time and then work
from there.   As Dan points out the cross pollination was high in those
days and it was not just from the labs to the Universities.  For instance,
Ted took fsck back to Summit & MH, as well as a number of other tools
(although I think that one had the longest reach).   Noel has mentioned
similar stories from MIT.  Chesson brought all the networking stuff from
UoI and we saw some of it in datakit (an earlier version of his mpx code
for V7 he did as a grad student).   You get the idea....

Clem

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