[TUHS] AIX (RT/PC & RS/6000) 1/2/3 compilers [was Re: Any UNIX With No C In Userland?

[Dan Cross]

On Sat, Mar 1, 2025 at 7:21 PM Charles H Sauer (he/him)
<sauer at technologists.com> wrote:
> On 3/1/2025 5:46 PM, segaloco via TUHS wrote:
> > But I digress, I seem to recall reading in another thread here that AIX may have had a fair deal of IBM stuff like perhaps some PL/I or PL/S down in the guts of significant chunks at one point, but I couldn't speak to that with any authority.  I could see IBM what with their legacy in languages bristling at letting C be the star of the show.
>
> For all our faults in the AIX team and IBM in general, there was no
> desire to have legacy IBM languages as primary in AIX.
>
> https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/
> tries to explain why PL.8 code existed in early AIX and how PL.8 code
> was eliminated in AIX 3 development.
>
> AIX for the RT 1&2 bundled pcc (with the HCR optimization phase in AIX 2).
>
> Since I left IBM in the midst of AIX 3 development, I'm not certain what
> happened with compilers after I left. Part of the confusion was IBM
> Toronto rewriting the Yorktown Research compiler to be a "product
> worthy" C compiler. There may have been desire to gain revenue for the
> Toronto compiler, but I assume that some some C compiler was bundled in
> AIX 3.

As I recall, you needed a license for the compiler suite on AIX 3; the
compiler was XL C, and was very highly regarded (other compilers in
the same general family were XL C++ and XL Fortran). By AIX 4 this was
definitely true.

        - Dan C.