Re: A "Via Pascal" Modula 2 Compiler ?

Marco van de Voort wrote:
> On 2007-01-12, Christoph Schlegel <christoph.schlegel@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> I don't think Modula-2 disappears. But it is a fact that there is very 
>> low interest in the language at the moment. As GNU Modula-2 is becoming

>> more and more stable
> 
> I haven't seen a GM2 status for a while? If sb here is into it, maybe he
> could summarize recent GM2 developments ?

Most recent information is always available from this list:
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gm2

Just direct your questions to Mr Gaius Mulley (the developer of GNU 
Modula-2). GM2 claims to be a complete and quite stable PIM Modula-2 
compiler. Also have a look here:
http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/

and here (latest changelog posted to the mailing-list):
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gm2/2007-01/msg00001.html

>> there simply is an alternative if one wants to use
>> the language. The GNU Compiler Collection is (as you pointed out for 
>> FPC) also available for most platforms. GM2 also integrates nice with 
>> the other GNU tools.
> 
> (FPC also integrates with the core set, but at arms length, without
relying
> on them)
> 
>> In my opinion using a mixture of languages can ease ones life. Right 
>> language for the right job... Availability for Windows-systems will
also 
>> be im****tant. That's why I am playing with MinGW/GM2 at the moment.
> 
> The need for layers like "mingw" (and most im****tantly the dependancies
and
> deployment issues) at all is exactly why FPC tries to avoid relying on
GNU
> tools too much. We hope to be GNU-free on Windows in a year.

Which is a good plan of course. By the way this is also one point for 
the Modula-3 compilers I mentioned earlier: the BSD-like license. But 
this is license-talk for another group... MinGW is quite "light" 
compared to Cygwin and if we had something like Dev-GM2 nearly no one 
would feel there is such a layer. The produced binaries are native as 
far as I understand things.

>> Having said all that I think your project is interesting but I simply
do 
>> not like Pascal. 
> 
> Each his own. I actually ended up with Pascal because while I considered
> M2 to be better on most points, the differences were pretty shallow, and
> Pascal was more practical from a compiler availability view. 

Yup. Each his own. Choice is great. I like the strict modularization but 
also the appearance of the code - strange but for me a Modula-2 RECORD 
is more readable than a record in Pascal (just one example).

>> GM2 already is an alternative if you do not need all 
>> the libraries and interfaces FPC and its community provide.
> 
> (the pure interfaces could be machinetranslated to GM2 I think, if GM2
can
> already create headers for arbitrary C libraries. With this I mean, have
> constructs/pragma's for e.g. unions, packing of records etc.
> 
> A Coco diehard could probably hack up such converter beast in an
afternoon)

Interesting. I already do look at FPC library interfaces sometimes to 
learn how to get things started...