[HECnet] C compiler for TOPS-10

[Thomas DeBellis]

The kcc compiler comes installed with sources on the PANDA distribution 
for Tops-20.

A review shows support for CompuServe's CSI interface (Tops-10) 
derivative and incomplete support for Tops-10.  That would be in libc as 
there are some things that you really can't make Tops-10 do.

On 3/14/20 4:53 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 14, 2020 at 11:36 AM Robert Armstrong <bob at jfcl.com 
> <mailto:bob at jfcl.com>> wrote:
>
>       I remember using a C compiler under TOPS-10, but that was far
>     away and very long ago.  Can anybody tell me if my memory is bad,
>     or did that really exist?  Was it a DEC product or a DECUS thing?
>
>     Thanks
>
>     Bob
>
>
> There are several, I have personally used a couple of them in the 
> past.  The original one is the Snyder Compiler from MIT  for ITS (his 
> 1973 MIT MS thesis is here: MAC-TR-149.pdf 
> <https://github.com/PDP-10/Snyder-C-compiler/blob/master/MAC-TR-149.pdf> ) 
> the sources are available, https://github.com/PDP-10/Snyder-C-compiler 
> This is work he did originally at BTL under Dennis Ritchie and Steve 
> Johnson's tutelage   -- it precedes the Johnson compiler (PCC).  This 
> is very early in C development, there may be a version of Lesk's 
> Portable I/O library in it (I've forgotten), but Dennis has not even 
> started to think about stdio when Alan wrote it, much less more modern 
> C ideas like unions and much of what he describes in K&R.  The 
> language that it compiles is basically similar to UNIX 4th or 5th 
> Edition with the assumptions being similar to the 36-bit compiler 
> Steve had written for the Honeywell machine at the time.
>
> IIRC this compiler was originally for ITS, but we had running on 
> TOPS-10 at CMU at some point in the mid/late 1970s.  I probably have a 
> copy somewhere on an old PDP-10 backup tape.
>
> Sometime between 81-85, Ken Harrenstien of SRI took the Stanford WAITS 
> C Compiler from Ken Chen (called KCC) and updated it to be more 
> modern.   IIRC the Harrenstein compiler actually fully supports the 
> original ANSI C definition.  The ASCII doc files for it can be found 
> here http://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/kcc/ and I suspect the compiler 
> itself can be found by hunting around the Internet.  I personally 
> never used it because I had long ago stopped working with PDP-10's by 
> the time Ken created it, although I know a number of my PDP-10 friends 
> said it works/worked well.  Chen's version that Harrenstien started 
> with supported a more modern definition of the language than Snyder, 
> and IIRC correctly was a little better integrated into the traditional 
> PDP-10 I/O - /i.e./ supported a number of JSYS's directly.
>
> I know of two others, my old friend the late Jay Lepreau of Utah took 
> the VAX Berkeley updated version of the Johnson compiler (PCC) and 
> moved it to the PDP-10/20 at some point in the late 1970s/early 
> 1980s.  This version matched K&R and seems to have somewhat replaced 
> the Snyder and Chen compilers as you could move things from V7 
> PDP-11's to the 10s reasonably easily.  As best I can tell, the 
> Lepreau compiler was popular (particularly on TOPS-20) until the 
> Harrenstien version of KCC came about.   I suspect you can dig it up 
> if you have some patience, although, at this point, I would probably 
> look for Harenstien's KCC.
>
> There was at least one other I have heard about called the Sargasso C 
> Compiler, but I know nothing about it.   Search is your friend, check 
> out: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.sys.pdp10/gc2avXfEJMg
>
> I have also heard that someone retargeted a version of gcc, but I have 
> not idea how well that is maintained since most progress for gcc 
> moving forward has been driven by support for modern architectures.
>
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