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

[Stuff Received]

On 2025-03-01 21:43, Dan Cross wrote:
> 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.

Some decades ago, I was checking whether our product ran properly on AIX 
(version forgotten).  The xlc man page stated that at the highest 
optimisation level, the "semantics of the source code might not be 
respected" (or something very similar).  I no longer remember the 
versions.  Has anyone else seen this?

S.