gcobol: a progress report

gcobol: a progress report

[James K. Lowden]

Home Page:  https://cobolworx.com/pages/cobforgcc.html
Repository: https://gitlab.cobolworx.com/COBOLworx/gcc-cobol
Packages:
https://gitlab.cobolworx.com/COBOLworx/gcc-cobol/-/packages/2

The GCC Cobol aspirant is now 16 months old, and pupating. If Cobol's
60-year history were an hour, gcobol is now one minute old.  

When last we met our intrepid duo, gcobol had compiled 100 programs,
perhaps 1000 lines of Cobol.  Today we're pleased to announce a
milestone: success with "nucleus" and "intrinsic function" modules of
the NIST CCVS-85 test suite.

The Cobol Compiler Validation System

    "tests for conformity to the American National Standard (ANSI
Document Reference X3.23-1985) and the standard of the International
Organisation for Standardisation (ISO Document Reference
ISO-1989-1985)".

It comprises 14 modules totaling 391 programs, with each program
implementing many tests.

We addressed ourselves just to the 95 programs in "nucleus" module,
which tests the core language features.  We can report 100% of 4381
tests succeed for 93 of those 95.  That's 8744 lines of Cobol.  We
ignored the remaining 2 programs because they test obsolete features.
If you want a Cobol compiler that supports features that were obsolete
in 1985, you probably have a card reader handy.  

We have, in other words, a verified, working Cobol-85 compiler.  

We add new NIST tests to the "ok" column as we progress.  The packages
above are created via CI/CD for each successful commit, and pass all
tests.  

How big is it?  50,000 lines, give or take:  

$ cloc gcc/cobol/*.{cc,h,l,y} libgcobol/*.cc
      36 text files.
      36 unique files.                              
       0 files ignored.

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.90  T=0.09 s 
(419.0 files/s, 710127.6 lines/s)
----------------------------------------------------------------
Language      files          blank        comment           code
----------------------------------------------------------------
C++              19           5330           6546          32332
yacc              2           1147            367           8744
C/C++ Header     14            598            892           3010
lex               1            312             95           1637
----------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:             36           7387           7900          45723
----------------------------------------------------------------

But wait!  There's more!

    https://cobolworx.com/pages/cobforgcc.html

We're extending gdb for Cobol, too.  While there's more work to do, the
important stuff is there: set break points, jump over PERFORM
statements, and examine data.

For your administrative convenience, we have packaged both gcobol and
gdb-gcobol as binary Ubuntu packages.  The gcobol package contains
*only* the gcobol files; installing it will not disturb your gcc
installation.

Each package is based on the master branch in the git repository, the
better to facilitate eventual inclusion in GCC and gdb.  

Plans.

We are continuing with other NIST verification modules.  If using git,
you can track our progress with "make -C nist/ report".  

We hope the future direction of gcobol will soon be influenced by user
interest.  While an ISO standard Cobol compiler is a good foundation,
every Cobol shop relies on different variations and extensions to the
language.  Early adopters have an opportunity to make their voices
heard and needs met.

For the immediate future, we're planning:

    * (more) conditional compilation
    * improvements to EBCDIC and Unicode support
    * better error messages
    * support for EXEC SQL
    * modifications consequent to GCC review 

We are: 
  *  James K. Lowden  <jklowden@symas.com>
	Front of the front-end: lexer and parser
  *  Robert Dubner <rdubner@symas.com>
	Back of the front-end: adapting Cobol to Gimple

Thank you for you kind attention.

--jkl

P.S. As a reminder, gcobol is a Cobol compiler based on gcc. It should
not be confused with GnuCOBOL
(https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnucobol). That project is a Cobol
translator: it compiles Cobol to C, and invokes gcc to produce
executable code.