Open Source COBOLs (was: Differences in data description in programm)

..    On  28.11.04
wrote  jjgavan@shaw.ca (James J. Gavan)
on  /COMP/LANG/COBOL
in  H5bqd.372236$%k.327708@pd7tw2no
about  Re: Differences in data description in programming languages



JJG> Totally ignoring OO, because that's a 'biggie' to take on - what
JJG> features do they have actually running from the COBOL 2002 standard
JJG> ? That doesn't mean they have to be 1,000% COBOL 2002 compliant -
JJG> nobody else is !  For starters do they have the Intrinsic Functions
JJG> .What is their target market with, "It's not the final product, but
JJG> with this release.......". Are they seriously hoping to knock-off
JJG> AcuCorp, Fujitsu, Liant or Micro Focus.

The last time I checked, Fujitsu COBOL prices start with 3'250
USD, which is quite hefty in my view.

Tiny COBOL is meant to be free to use.

JJG> I've rarely looked at this stuff, and it might have been an Open
JJG> Source other than Tiny C.,

There is also

"COBOL For GCC, a GNU Project

"COBOL for GCC is a project to create a COBOL 85 compliant
compiler for GNU/Linux and other operating systems, using the GCC (GNU
Compiler Collection) code generation framework . Also included within
the source code are two sample compiler front ends to GCC (exa and
toy)."

But it seems there is no active development going on currently. I
just checked the webpage of the developer mailing list, and there was
only one message to be found for 2004, from William M. Klein, by the
way.

http://www.gnu.org/software/cobol/cobolforgcc.html
or  http://cobolforgcc.sourceforge.net/
or  http://sourceforge.net/projects/cobolforgcc/


Tiny COBOLs homepage is http://tiny-cobol.sourceforge.net/




Lüko Willms                                     http://www.willms-edv.de
/--------- L.WILLMS@jpberlin.de -- Alle Rechte vorbehalten --

Nach einem dreißigjährigen Krieg mit sich selbst kam es endlich zu einem Ver
gleich, aber die Zeit war verloren. -G.C.Lichtenberg

l.willms@jpberlin.de (Lueko Willms) wrote in message:

>     The last time I checked, Fujitsu COBOL prices start with 3'250
> USD, which is quite hefty in my view.
>
>     Tiny COBOL is meant to be free to use.
>
>     Tiny COBOLs homepage is http://tiny-cobol.sourceforge.net/

I've just started playing with this. In order not to gum up my home
system (Windows XP) too much, I chose to install the MinGW version
instead of the Cygwin version. In addition to TinyCOBOL, you need
PDCurses (from the MinGW web site) and an old version of Berkeley DB
(from the TinyCOBOL web site).

Here's a brief installation guide:

install mingw to c:\mingw
install tc to c:\tinycobol
install pdcurses to c:\mingw
unzip berkeley db to c:\mingw\lib (.a file) & c:\mingw\include (.h
file)
edit tcobol.bat or add c:\mingw\bin to PATH
to fix undefined reference to 'dbopen' add to file htcobolrc:

LD_EXTRA_LIBS: -ldb

In order to get programs to compile without errors, I had to add the
line above to the "htcobolrc" file, as the compiler (htcobol) would
not recognize the usual -L or -l switches. Including the digging
around needed to find the key addition to the config file, I found the
annoyance in setting up and using this program to be about average for
open source software.

Thanks for these tips for installing TinyCobol for windows MinGW.
I doubt if I could have done it otherwise.

Well, I got it working and it compiles helloworld and a couple
other simple programs.

I just happened to wonder if anyone out there has 
SOMETHING RESEMBLING A REAL LIFE APPLICATION that
will run using tinycobol????

I've scoured the internet and cant find any serious cobol
source code out there!!!

quote:
Originally posted by E P Chandler 
l.willms@jpberlin.de (Lueko Willms) wrote in message:

>     The last time I checked, Fujitsu COBOL prices start with 3'250
> USD, which is quite hefty in my view.
>
>     Tiny COBOL is meant to be free to use.
>
>     Tiny COBOLs homepage is http://tiny-cobol.sourceforge.net/

I've just started playing with this. In order not to gum up my home
system (Windows XP) too much, I chose to install the MinGW version
instead of the Cygwin version. In addition to TinyCOBOL, you need
PDCurses (from the MinGW web site) and an old version of Berkeley DB
(from the TinyCOBOL web site).

Here's a brief installation guide:

install mingw to c:\mingw
install tc to c:\tinycobol
install pdcurses to c:\mingw
unzip berkeley db to c:\mingw\lib (.a file) & c:\mingw\include (.h
file)
edit tcobol.bat or add c:\mingw\bin to PATH
to fix undefined reference to 'dbopen' add to file htcobolrc:

LD_EXTRA_LIBS: -ldb

In order to get programs to compile without errors, I had to add the
line above to the "htcobolrc" file, as the compiler (htcobol) would
not recognize the usual -L or -l switches. Including the digging
around needed to find the key addition to the config file, I found the
annoyance in setting up and using this program to be about average for
open source software.