garry@ithaca.uucp (Garry Wiegand) (01/24/91)
I like what I've seen of C++ so far - a lot of the subtleties are like twisty little passages all alike, but if you avoid these by building up some strong guiding coding customs then C++ looks like it could be a lot of fun, and sensible. So I am getting ready to spec C++ as the language to be used for a large (about 100K lines w/o comments) new project here. The project must in the end be portable to essentially every workstation, most supers, many micros, and a few mainframes. My strong preference would be to have a C++ compiler or translator available on each and every machine; in up to a few cases we could live with carrying over the C output of a translator running elsewhere. I have been listening to the discussion about g++ and I am feeling nervous: do people believe that C++ is mature enough now to really face the world? Can the implementations of this language bear the load of a real-world project? To give some specifics, I can see that there will probably be "usable" real compilers available for PCs, Macs, and a majority of the workstations (dec, hp, apollo, sun, sg) in time for the porting phase of the project (9-12 months from now.) Am I right in this? For "all the others", I suppose I'm going to need to use C++-to-C translators. The only translator I know about so far is AT&T's cfront. Is it the only one? Is there any PD one that I could port to strange machines myself? I do not have a copy of cfront yet; can I feed in the characteristics of any arbitrary back-end C compiler (I'm thinking of the basic sizeofs plus knowledge of struct packing) and have it produce correct appropriate C code? Even better, can cfront produce C code that is clever enough to be directly portable to an arbitrary machine, without further ado? [I have reason to worry about language portability: it's only been in the last 12 to 24 months that regular C compilers have gotten stable enough that we don't have to jam "workarounds" into our source all the time. When we started, in 1986, the C world was a bit of a mess.] many thanks for your thoughts Garry Wiegand --- Ithaca Software, Alameda, California ...!uunet!ithaca!garry, garry%ithaca.uucp@uunet.uu.net
chip@tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) (01/26/91)
According to garry@ithaca.uucp (Garry Wiegand): >So I am getting ready to spec C++ as the language to be used for a >large (about 100K lines w/o comments) new project here. Our project is about a tenth of that in size. G++ 1.37.1 seems to be holding up well. I feel much more secure about G++ than I would about a commercial C++ compiler, since compiler bugs can be fixed or not as I choose. >To give some specifics, I can see that there will probably be >"usable" real compilers available for PCs, Macs, and a majority of >the workstations (dec, hp, apollo, sun, sg) in time for the porting >phase of the project (9-12 months from now.) Am I right in this? Yup. GCC 2.0 will include what is now called G++ (and Objective C as well, if I am not mistaken). No dates have been forthcoming from the dudes in Boston, but I'd be very surprised if the first release isn't available by summer. And G++ 1.37.1 is available as a backup. And of course there are the commercial compilers; you'll need to buy at least two for the MS-DOS and Macintosh environments, and any CPUs not supported by GNU compilers can be covered that way. -- Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT <chip@tct.uucp>, <uunet!pdn!tct!chip> "I want to mention that my opinions whether real or not are MY opinions." -- the inevitable William "Billy" Steinmetz
sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (01/26/91)
In article <1991Jan24.085547.910@ithaca.uucp> garry@ithaca.uucp (Garry Wiegand) writes: >I have been listening to the discussion about g++ and I am feeling >nervous: do people believe that C++ is mature enough now to really >face the world? Yes, I think so. The main problem with g++ right now is that it is not really compatible with the 'standard' (i.e. the Annotated Reference Manual). I suspect that this will change very quickly. > >To give some specifics, I can see that there will probably be >"usable" real compilers available for PCs, Macs, and a majority of >the workstations (dec, hp, apollo, sun, sg) in time for the porting >phase of the project (9-12 months from now.) Am I right in this? Most of these are available right now. Both Zortech and Turbo C++ are excellent products. Zortech is 'non-standard' only in its lack of the modern streamio interface. All versions of Unix have one or more versions of C++ available, either cfront from ATT, or some clone thereof. Does anyone know, is there a Mac version of C++ yet? -- --------------- uunet!tdatirv!sarima (Stanley Friesen)
mce@tc.fluke.COM (Brian McElhinney) (01/30/91)
sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes: >Does anyone know, is there a Mac version of C++ yet? Apple has a cfront 2.0 C++ that runs under their MPW environment. It includes extensions for inheriting from Object Pascal objects (mixing languages via inheritance doesn't strike me as a wonderful idea, but it does allow you to inherit from their MacApp library). Symantec (THINK C aka LightSpeed C) is rumored to be working on a C++ version of their stand-alone compiler/debugger environment. The initial release will not support MacApp, or so the rumor goes. I am not aware of a C++ that runs under AU/X, although I'm sure someone, somewhere, has unofficially ported g++. Brian McElhinney "If a squirrel crawls into an electric transformer and mce@tc.fluke.com explodes, does it make a noise hear over two block away?" --From ZEN FOR AMERICANS, by me.
Jim.Spencer@p510.f22.n282.z1.mmug.edgar.mn.org (Jim Spencer) (01/31/91)
Brian Mcelhinney writes in a message to All BM> Apple has a cfront 2.0 C++ that runs under their MPW environment. BM> It includes extensions for inheriting from Object Pascal objects BM> (mixing languages via inheritance doesn't strike me as a wonderful BM> idea, but it does allow you to inherit from their MacApp library). This is, of course, the only real reason that it was done. -- Jim Spencer - via The Minnesota Macintosh Users Group UUCP-Fido Gateway UUCP: ...uunet!tcnet!kksys!edgar!mmug!22.510!Jim.Spencer INET: Jim.Spencer@p510.f22.n282.z1.mmug.edgar.mn.org
keithb@hpwarch.hp.com (Keith Bagley) (02/07/91)
In article <1991Jan29.205834.9765@tc.fluke.COM> mce@tc.fluke.COM (Brian McElhinney) writes: >sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes: >>Does anyone know, is there a Mac version of C++ yet? > >Apple has a cfront 2.0 C++ that runs under their MPW environment. > >Symantec (THINK C aka LightSpeed C) is rumored to be working on a C++ >version of their stand-alone compiler/debugger environment. > >Brian McElhinney Also, Zortech is now porting their C++ compiler to the Mac. It will run under MPW and support MacApp. They are also supposedly developing a stand-alone compiler/debugger environment ( probably similar to TC++ or THINK C ) which will be released sometime later. In any event, the people at Zortech say the Mac C++ compiler is now in beta testing, and should be released very soon. Keith