Re: intent to package: mocka modula-2 compiler
John Lapeyre <lapeyre@physics.Arizona.EDU> writes:
> On Thu, 27 Aug 1998, Andreas Jellinghaus wrote:
>
> aj>can you fix bugs without the beg ? if not, the program is contrib, but not
> aj>free enought for main.
>
> This is what the current upstream maintainer says.
>
> >>It's possible to find simple bugs in the generated code, but it's not
> >>possible to develop further without BEG.
I've maintained Mocka from 1991 to 1995, and there were no significant
changes since 1995. The above statement is true, you can find and
analyze simple bugs using the generated code, if you know how BEG
works and have read the .beg specification of the generated backend.
But fixing them is probably not feasible for most of the usual bugs.
> Good News: The author says he can contribute a C version of BEG.
> I will get this as soon as possible. I already asked how free it is. In
> any case, I think it is a good development.
I agree, that it would be good if the source of BEG would be
available, but I still can remember how difficult it has been to get
Helmut Emmelmann's permission to distribute a i386-Linux-binary of
BEG. [Helmut Emmelmann is the author and owner of BEG]
It is not clear what is meant by `C version of BEG'. BEG is written
in Modula-2 and this source can be converted to C. If this is meant
by `C version of BEG', it probably is not [yet?] legal to distribute
it. On the other hand, BEG usually generates backends in Modula-2,
but there exists a modified version of BEG generating backends in C.
If this is meant by `C version of BEG' it might be possible to
distribute this as an executable.
> Another point. The same group has a free Modula-2 to C
> translator, which apparantly works well. I have built it, but not tested
> it yet. I will package it when I get a chance.
mtc is free and part of the free 1992 release of Cocktail. It is a
good translator of correct Modula-2 to C. Due to its lack of
correctness checks, it is not really usable as Modula-2 development
environment.
It would be good, if you'd package not only mtc, but all of Cocktail,
probably with mtc in a separate package.
> One more note: They like to invoke it with "mc". It was pretty
> funny to see one of their scripts invoke midnight commander. I changed to
> MC for no good reason. Is that reasonable? mmc , or Mc perhaps ?
I'd suggest `mocka'. One doesn't have to type it very often, so the
length of the name is no problem.
Christian.
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