[TUHS] Re: On the uniqueness of DMR's C compiler

[Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>]

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On Wed, May 8, 2024, 9:39 PM Paul McJones <paul@mcjones.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 8 May 2024 14:12:15 -0400,Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
>
> FWIW:  The DEC Mod-II and Mod-III
> were new implementations from DEC WRL or SRC (I forget).  They targeted
> Alpha and I, maybe Vax.  I'd have to ask someone like Larry Stewart or Jeff
> Mogul who might know/remember, but I thought that the font end to the DEC
> MOD2 compiler might have been partly based on Wirths but rewritten and by
> the time of the MOD3 FE was a new one originally written using the previous
> MOD2 compiler -- but I don't remember that detail.
>
>
> Michael Powell at DEC WRL wrote a Modula 2 compiler that generated VAX
> code. Here’s an extract from announcement.d accompanying a 1992 release of
> the compiler from gatekeeper.dec.com:
>
> The compiler was designed and built by Michael L. Powell, and originally
> released in 1984.  Joel McCormack sped the compiler up, fixed lots of
> bugs, and
> swiped/wrote a User's Manual.  Len Lattanzi ported the compiler to the
> MIPS.
>
>
> Later, Paul Rovner and others at DEC SRC designed Modula-2+ (a language
> extension with exceptions, threads, garbage collection, and runtime type
> dispatch). The Modula-2+ compiler was originally based on Powell’s
> compiler. Modula-2+ ran on the VAX.
>
> Here’s a DEC SRC research report on Modula-2+:
> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/tech_reports/SRC-RR-3.pdf
>
> Modula-3 was designed at DEC SRC and Olivetti Labs. It had a portable
> implementation (using the GCC back end) and ran on a number of machines
> including Alpha.
>

FreeBSD's cvsup was written using it. The threading made it possible to
make maximum use of the 56k modems of the time and speed downloads of the
source changes. The port for modula-3 changed a number of time from gcc to
egcs back to gcc before running out of steam...

Warner

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