klaiber@UDEL.EDU (Alexander Klaiber) (05/15/87)
I have another few pennies worth of comments on the message of 'heiser@ethz.uucp': One thing that clearly speaks in favour of the Cambridge compiler is the nice library that comes with it. Too sad the people there decided to go their own way and not implement an InOut module, but rather their 'TextIO' which is not bad, but does not really contribute to portability! Also, tools like m2make are quite useful; however, it has no support for the m2c '-m' switch -- something that makes it really useless in some circumstances! One REALLY BIG disadvantage of the Cambridge compiler: It does not work with dbx! Look guys, even in a "perfect"(??) language as Modula-2, one still has to do some debugging. Now, dbx is the standard-debugger for UNIX, and it is a really powerful one, too. The debugger that comes with the Cambridge implementation is just crappy and useless for any practical purpose. Considering how easy it is to add support for dbx, I cannot understand why the people at Cambridge had to chose this awkward option! As far as I'm concerned, the ability to use such a powerful debugger far outweighs the other advantages of the Cambridge-system. The Cambridge library, I can port to the DEC compiler easily (in fact, we have done that already) and I still can write my own makefiles As far as I'm converned, I'll stick to the DEC product! usu. disclaimer: I am not associated with either DEC or Cambridge, nobody else knows that I'm writing this and nobody is responsible for the content of this message!
lyndon@ncc.UUCP (Lyndon Nerenberg) (06/02/87)
> One REALLY BIG disadvantage of the Cambridge compiler: It does not work > with dbx! Look guys, even in a "perfect"(??) language as Modula-2, one > still has to do some debugging. Now, dbx is the standard-debugger for UNIX, Sorry kids, but dbx has been heard of in more stereo shops than Unix shops. Let's not get too self righteous, eh? The world does not revolve around BSD.