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

[Kevin Bowling]

On Sat, Mar 1, 2025 at 5:11 PM Charles H Sauer (he/him)
<sauer at technologists.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 3/1/2025 5:46 PM, segaloco via TUHS wrote:
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> >
> > 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.
> >
> > - Matt G.
>
> 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.

AIX 3 still shipped with a compiler (see, for instance the N40 media
https://www.ardent-tool.com/RS6000/7007/AIX.html) although I've never
bothered to see if it was separately licensed or not (there is no
key/drm).

AIX 4 divorced the compiler from base went under a few names over the
years:  C fo AIX, xl C/C++, VisualAge C/C++.  Lately things were
rebased onto a clang frontend and called Open XL.  The VisualAge one
is kind of interesting because it includes the VisualAge SmallTalk
derived IDE which eventually spawned the Eclipse IDE project.
Slightly less clunky without the Java.

> Charlie
>
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