[TUHS] History of non-Bell C compilers?

[Peter Yardley]

I used the DEC VMS C compiler extensively while I was at NSWIT. I ported a lot of Berkley (I think) C code to VMS. Some of their VLSI design suite, KIC etc. There weren’t a lot of changes to make, the compiler and library was pretty K&R from what I remember. The usual small header issues applied. VMS IO is a bit different from UNIX IO  but they had a mode (stream I think) that meant minimal changes to UNIX code.

http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/dec/vax/lang/c/AI-L370C-TE_Guide_to_VAX_C_V2.3_Mar1987.pdf

It did help that the code I was working with was pretty damn good. I learn C porting KIC to VMS.

> On 12 Mar 2024, at 7:44 AM, Marc Rochkind <mrochkind at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Since it came up in this thread, here's my review of Coherent in BYTE Magazine (1985):
> 
> https://www.mrochkind.com/mrochkind/docs/Byte-Pick-Coherent-Theos.pdf
> 
> Marc
> 
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 11:13 AM Paul Ruizendaal <pnr at planet.nl> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 7, 2024, 4:14 PM Tom Lyon <pugs78 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > For no good reason, I've been wondering about the early history of C
> > compilers that were not derived from Ritchie, Johnson, and Snyder at Bell.
> > Especially for x86.  Anyone have tales?
> > Were any of those compilers ever used to port UNIX?
> 
> An unusual one would be the “revenue bomb” compiler that Charles Simonyi and Richard Brodie did at Microsoft in 1981.
> 
> This compiler was intended to provided a uniform environment for the menagerie of 8 and 16-bit computers of the era. It compiled to a byte code which executed through a small interpreter. This by itself was hardly new of course, but it had some unique features. It generated code in overlays, so that it could run a code base larger than 64KB (but it defined only one data segment). It also defined a small set of “system” commands, that allowed for uniform I/O. I still have the implementation spec for that interpreter somewhere.
> 
> This compiler was used for the first versions of Multiplan and Word, and my understanding is that the byte code engine was later re-used in Visual Basic. I think the compiler also had a Xenix port, maybe it even was Xenix native (and at this time, Xenix would still essentially have been V7).
> 
> I am not sure to what extent this compiler was independent of the Bell compilers. It could well be that it was based on PCC, Microsoft was a Unix licensee after all and at the time busy doing ports. On the other hand, Charles Simonyi would certainly have been capable of creating his own from scratch. I do know that this compiler preceded Lattice C, the latter of which was distributed by Microsoft as Microsoft C 1.0.
> 
> Maybe others know more about this Simonyi/Brodie compiler?
> 
> Paul
> 
> Notes:
> http://www.memecentral.com/mylife.htm
> https://web.archive.org/web/20080905231519/http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/appdev/story/0%2C10801%2C76413%2C00.html
> http://seefigure1.com/images/xenix/xenix-timeline.jpg
> 
> 
> -- 
> My new email address is mrochkind at gmail.com

Peter Yardley
peter.martin.yardley at gmail.com