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ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update

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  ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update Stephen Heumann <stephen.heumann@gmail.com> - 2017-10-22 22:51 -0500
    Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update Andy McFadden <thefadden@gmail.com> - 2017-10-23 07:50 -0700
    Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> - 2017-10-23 20:34 +0000
    Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update Anthony Ortiz <anthonypaulo@gmail.com> - 2017-10-23 16:58 -0700
      Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> - 2017-10-24 00:01 +0000
        Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update Stephen Heumann <stephen.heumann@gmail.com> - 2017-10-23 22:46 -0500
      Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update Steve Nickolas <usotsuki@buric.co> - 2017-10-24 01:55 -0400
      Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update James Davis <JPD.Enterprises@outlook.com> - 2017-10-24 12:56 -0700
        Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update Anthony Ortiz <anthonypaulo@gmail.com> - 2017-11-03 14:23 -0700
          Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update Stephen Heumann <stephen.heumann@gmail.com> - 2017-11-03 18:12 -0500
            Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update Anthony Ortiz <anthonypaulo@gmail.com> - 2017-11-03 16:28 -0700
              Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update Stephen Heumann <stephen.heumann@gmail.com> - 2017-11-03 19:00 -0500
                Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update Anthony Ortiz <anthonypaulo@gmail.com> - 2017-11-03 17:11 -0700
                  Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update Stephen Heumann <stephen.heumann@gmail.com> - 2017-11-03 20:21 -0500
                    Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update Kelvin Sherlock <kelvin@pro-kegs.uucp> - 2017-11-03 23:18 -0400
                Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update John Brooks <jbrooks@blueshiftinc.com> - 2017-11-10 21:42 -0800
                  Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update Kelvin Sherlock <email@domain.com> - 2017-11-11 15:00 -0500
                    Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update John Brooks <jbrooks@blueshiftinc.com> - 2017-11-12 11:58 -0800
                      Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update Anthony Ortiz <anthonypaulo@gmail.com> - 2017-11-12 13:01 -0800
                        Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update Stephen Heumann <stephen.heumann@gmail.com> - 2017-11-12 18:38 -0600
                          Re: ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update John Brooks <jbrooks@blueshiftinc.com> - 2017-11-12 19:20 -0800

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#3977 — ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update

Hi folks,

I'd like to announce that I've posted the ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update on 
GitHub. The full source code is available there, and a binary update 
package is on the releases page:

https://github.com/byteworksinc/ORCA-C/releases

This update incorporates a number of patches for ORCA/C that I've 
developed over the last couple years, as well as some patches from 
Kelvin Sherlock. These are mainly bug fixes, but also include some new 
features such as support for a few language constructs from C99. Since 
Mike Westerfield kindly posted the source code for ORCA/C on GitHub, 
I've had a chance to apply the patches to it and prepare this new 
release.

I would recommend that anyone using ORCA/C apply this update. It's 
labeled as a beta since it hasn't been tested much by other people, but 
I think the bug fixes should reduce the number of problems encountered 
when writing or porting programs using ORCA/C, and the new features are 
also useful in some cases.

If you have any questions or feedback, please let me know. Also, if you 
have additional patches for ORCA/C or want to get involved in 
developing it, please speak up.

Note that this update must be applied on top of an existing copy of 
ORCA/C 2.1.x. If you don't already have that, it's available as part of 
the Opus ][ collection sold by Juiced.GS.

--Stephen Heumann

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#3978

On Sunday, October 22, 2017 at 8:51:38 PM UTC-7, Stephen Heumann wrote:
> This update incorporates a number of patches for ORCA/C that I've 
> developed over the last couple years, as well as some patches from 
> Kelvin Sherlock. These are mainly bug fixes, but also include some new 
> features such as support for a few language constructs from C99.

Shiny!

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#3982

Stephen Heumann wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> I'd like to announce that I've posted the ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update on 
> GitHub. The full source code is available there, and a binary update 
> package is on the releases page:
> 
> https://github.com/byteworksinc/ORCA-C/releases
> 
> This update incorporates a number of patches for ORCA/C that I've 
> developed over the last couple years, as well as some patches from 
> Kelvin Sherlock.

Since 2015 at least, I see. Good job!

-- 
]DF$
Apple II 40th Anniversary User's Guide:
http://macgui.com/newa2guide/

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#3983

On Sunday, October 22, 2017 at 11:51:38 PM UTC-4, Stephen Heumann wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> I'd like to announce that I've posted the ORCA/C 2.2.0 B1 update on 
> GitHub. The full source code is available there, and a binary update 
> package is on the releases page:
> 
> https://github.com/byteworksinc/ORCA-C/releases
> 
> This update incorporates a number of patches for ORCA/C that I've 
> developed over the last couple years, as well as some patches from 
> Kelvin Sherlock. These are mainly bug fixes, but also include some new 
> features such as support for a few language constructs from C99. Since 
> Mike Westerfield kindly posted the source code for ORCA/C on GitHub, 
> I've had a chance to apply the patches to it and prepare this new 
> release.
> 
> I would recommend that anyone using ORCA/C apply this update. It's 
> labeled as a beta since it hasn't been tested much by other people, but 
> I think the bug fixes should reduce the number of problems encountered 
> when writing or porting programs using ORCA/C, and the new features are 
> also useful in some cases.
> 
> If you have any questions or feedback, please let me know. Also, if you 
> have additional patches for ORCA/C or want to get involved in 
> developing it, please speak up.
> 
> Note that this update must be applied on top of an existing copy of 
> ORCA/C 2.1.x. If you don't already have that, it's available as part of 
> the Opus ][ collection sold by Juiced.GS.
> 
> --Stephen Heumann

Is it true that ORCA/C is the one compiler to rule them all, one compiler to find them, one compiler to bring them all and in the Apple II bind them?

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#3984

Anthony Ortiz wrote:
>
> Is it true that ORCA/C is the one compiler to rule them all, one compiler
> to find them, one compiler to bring them all and in the Apple II bind
> them?
>

No, but its bugs were infamous. Search these newsgroups for "orca bugs"

So it's good that Stephen Heumann is fixing them, 10 to 15 years later. :-P

-- 
]DF$
Apple II 40th Anniversary User's Guide:
http://macgui.com/newa2guide/

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#3985

On 2017-10-24 00:01:09 +0000, D Finnigan said:

> No, but its bugs were infamous. Search these newsgroups for "orca bugs"

FWIW, I think ORCA/C is certainly the best C compiler out there 
targeting the IIGS, which is why I use it and think it's worth 
improving. I also wouldn't consider it infamously buggy, at least as of 
the last commercial release (ORCA/C 2.1.0, from 1996). It had already 
fixed a lot of the bugs in earlier versions, which are mostly what that 
newsgroup search turns up. That said, there were certainly still some 
bugs, and I eventually decided it would be better to fix the bugs than 
to keep working around them whenever I hit them in things I was working 
on.

One very helpful resource for this project was the old ORCA/C bug list 
compiled by Sönke Behrens, which contains a bunch of useful bug reports 
and test cases that I referred to when making my changes:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160415235823/http://warshaft.com/obugs.htm

I've fixed a lot of the compiler bugs on that list. There are still 
some remaining issues that I know about, but most of them aren't that 
serious. I'll try to get those entered in the bug database on GitHub 
soon, and continue working on fixing them (as well as implementing some 
new features) as I have time. I'd also welcome either bug reports or 
patches from anyone else who wants to get involved.

> So it's good that Stephen Heumann is fixing them, 10 to 15 years later. :-P

More like 20+ years.

-- 
Stephen Heumann

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#3986

On Mon, 23 Oct 2017, Anthony Ortiz wrote:

> Is it true that ORCA/C is the one compiler to rule them all, one 
> compiler to find them, one compiler to bring them all and in the Apple 
> II bind them?

Well, there really isn't much else out there for 65816.

-uso.

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#3989

On Monday, October 23, 2017 at 4:58:22 PM UTC-7, Anthony Ortiz wrote:
> Is it true that ORCA/C is the one compiler to rule them all, one compiler to find them, one compiler to bring them all and in the Apple II bind them?

I don't really know, because I don't really use "C" anymore, nor do I program anymore, on my Enhanced Apple //e, but I do have Apple II Hyper-C documentation (that I printed out) in a 3-inch 3-ring binder, and the program & documentation on disk somewhere.  I suppose/suspect (IIRC) that it was one of the first Apple II "C" programming implementations.  I never used it much, just collected it mostly, so I don't know how buggy it is, either.  You may be able to find it online, or on Asimov, and see if you like it, or Orca/C, better.

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#3993

Is orca/c owned by anyone or have an official maintainer, or can anyone go in and, say, add some major enhancements and push a new version out?

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#3994

On 2017-11-03 21:23:53 +0000, Anthony Ortiz said:

> Is orca/c owned by anyone or have an official maintainer, or can anyone 
> go in and, say, add some major enhancements and push a new version out?

ORCA/C is still owned by the Byte Works.  Mike Westerfield agreed to 
put the source code up on GitHub and allow community members to work on 
it, subject to the license agreement in the repository (which, you'll 
notice, restricts the distribution of new versions).

I'm the main person maintaining it and putting out new versions at the 
moment.  Kelvin Sherlock has also contributed some patches, and other 
people in the community are welcome to as well.  They can be submitted 
as pull requests on GitHub, or by email to me.  If anyone else is 
planning to do major work on it, they can also talk to Mike to get 
direct commit access to the repository.

-- 
Stephen Heumann

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#3995

On Friday, November 3, 2017 at 7:12:45 PM UTC-4, Stephen Heumann wrote:
> On 2017-11-03 21:23:53 +0000, Anthony Ortiz said:
> 
> > Is orca/c owned by anyone or have an official maintainer, or can anyone 
> > go in and, say, add some major enhancements and push a new version out?
> 
> ORCA/C is still owned by the Byte Works.  Mike Westerfield agreed to 
> put the source code up on GitHub and allow community members to work on 
> it, subject to the license agreement in the repository (which, you'll 
> notice, restricts the distribution of new versions).
> 
> I'm the main person maintaining it and putting out new versions at the 
> moment.  Kelvin Sherlock has also contributed some patches, and other 
> people in the community are welcome to as well.  They can be submitted 
> as pull requests on GitHub, or by email to me.  If anyone else is 
> planning to do major work on it, they can also talk to Mike to get 
> direct commit access to the repository.
> 
> -- 
> Stephen Heumann

Thanks Stephen. Is Mike still active in the community? Is he still working on ORCA/C, or did he retire and let his disciples take over (so to speak)?

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#3996

On 2017-11-03 23:28:18 +0000, Anthony Ortiz said:

> Thanks Stephen. Is Mike still active in the community? Is he still 
> working on ORCA/C, or did he retire and let his disciples take over (so 
> to speak)?

Mike still pops up in the community occasionally, but I don't think 
he's actively working on Apple II stuff.  The new updates to ORCA/C are 
being done by me and other interested community members.

-- 
Stephen Heumann

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#3997

On Friday, November 3, 2017 at 8:00:13 PM UTC-4, Stephen Heumann wrote:
> On 2017-11-03 23:28:18 +0000, Anthony Ortiz said:
> 
> > Thanks Stephen. Is Mike still active in the community? Is he still 
> > working on ORCA/C, or did he retire and let his disciples take over (so 
> > to speak)?
> 
> Mike still pops up in the community occasionally, but I don't think 
> he's actively working on Apple II stuff.  The new updates to ORCA/C are 
> being done by me and other interested community members.
> 
> -- 
> Stephen Heumann

Gotcha, thanks for the info Stephen. Out of all the contributors, who would you say is best qualified when it comes to re-targeting?

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#3998

On 2017-11-04 00:11:35 +0000, Anthony Ortiz said:
> 
> Gotcha, thanks for the info Stephen. Out of all the contributors, who 
> would you say is best qualified when it comes to re-targeting?

By re-targeting, do you mean getting ORCA/C to run on other platforms 
(as a cross compiler) or getting it to generate code for other 
platforms?

If you mean getting it to run on modern platforms as a cross compiler, 
Kelvin Sherlock and I have both investigated that to some extent, but I 
don't think either of us has produced a fully working version.  I'm not 
really working on a cross-compiler version at the moment, but it is 
something that would be interesting to do.  If you or someone else 
wanted to seriously work on that, I'd suggest setting up a separate 
branch within the Git repository, so that development on the 
cross-compiler version could proceed in parallel to the existing 
IIGS-native version.

It you mean getting it to generate code for other platforms, I'm not 
aware of anyone who has worked on that.  It's theoretically possible, 
since ORCA/C uses an intermediate representation that could potentially 
be compiled down to code for other processors, but in practice you'd 
likely be better off working with another compiler framework that's 
designed to support multiple targets.

-- 
Stephen Heumann

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#3999

On 2017-11-04 01:21:48 +0000, Stephen Heumann said:

> 
> If you mean getting it to run on modern platforms as a cross compiler, 
> Kelvin Sherlock and I have both investigated that to some extent, but I 
> don't think either of us has produced a fully working version.

Five years ago, I ported the MPW ORCA/C IIgs (Apple Pascal) code to 
build with Free Pascal. It was slightly buggy (more so than the 
original) but it can be done. However, it's not particularly useful 
without a linker, assembler, Rez, etc.

I recommend using Golden Gate or mpw to run the original versions. :-)

Kelvin

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#4000

On Friday, November 3, 2017 at 5:00:13 PM UTC-7, Stephen Heumann wrote:
> On 2017-11-03 23:28:18 +0000, Anthony Ortiz said:
> 
> > Thanks Stephen. Is Mike still active in the community? Is he still 
> > working on ORCA/C, or did he retire and let his disciples take over (so 
> > to speak)?
> 
> Mike still pops up in the community occasionally, but I don't think 
> he's actively working on Apple II stuff.  The new updates to ORCA/C are 
> being done by me and other interested community members.
> 
> -- 
> Stephen Heumann

Has anyone compared the various 65816 C compilers (Orca, WDC, TCC)?

I am wondering what C compilers people are using, and the pros & cons of each.

-JB
@JBrooksBSI

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#4001

My 2 cents...

First off, since you're an assembly guy, don't look at the generated 
code unless you have a 5-gallon barf bucket within spitting distance.

ORCA/C is the only choide for IIgs C programming. Many of the 
complaints are based on older versions (1.x and even 2.0) 2.1+ are good 
enough. IIgs/OMF support is built in (dynamic segments, GS/OS calls, 
toolbox calls, OMF linker, etc).

WDC C: Now available for free (if you don't mind giving them your email 
address).  Windows only but it runs fine with wine on OS X (and 
presumably linux).  I guess it was originally known as Zardos C and 
used for SNES development. It has a lot of features for embedded 
development but no IIgs support whatsoever - if you want to make a 
toolbox or GS/OS call, you need to use inline assembly. Generated code 
is about on par with ORCA/C but I haven't compared it extensively.

If you want to live on the edge, I wrote a linker that links the 
WDC/Zardos object files into an OMF executable - 
https://github.com/ksherlock/wdc-utils .

TCC: My recollection is TCC was forked to add an ARM back end and that 
was forked to add a 65816 back end based on emulating an ARM.

On 2017-11-11 05:42:18 +0000, John Brooks said:

> 
> Has anyone compared the various 65816 C compilers (Orca, WDC, TCC)?
> 
> I am wondering what C compilers people are using, and the pros & cons of each.
> 
> -JB
> @JBrooksBSI

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#4002

On Saturday, November 11, 2017 at 12:00:25 PM UTC-8, Kelvin Sherlock wrote:
> My 2 cents...
> 
> First off, since you're an assembly guy, don't look at the generated 
> code unless you have a 5-gallon barf bucket within spitting distance.
> 
> ORCA/C is the only choide for IIgs C programming. Many of the 
> complaints are based on older versions (1.x and even 2.0) 2.1+ are good 
> enough. IIgs/OMF support is built in (dynamic segments, GS/OS calls, 
> toolbox calls, OMF linker, etc).
> 
> WDC C: Now available for free (if you don't mind giving them your email 
> address).  Windows only but it runs fine with wine on OS X (and 
> presumably linux).  I guess it was originally known as Zardos C and 
> used for SNES development. It has a lot of features for embedded 
> development but no IIgs support whatsoever - if you want to make a 
> toolbox or GS/OS call, you need to use inline assembly. Generated code 
> is about on par with ORCA/C but I haven't compared it extensively.
> 
> If you want to live on the edge, I wrote a linker that links the 
> WDC/Zardos object files into an OMF executable - 
> https://github.com/ksherlock/wdc-utils .
> 
> TCC: My recollection is TCC was forked to add an ARM back end and that 
> was forked to add a 65816 back end based on emulating an ARM.
> 
> On 2017-11-11 05:42:18 +0000, John Brooks said:
> 
> > 
> > Has anyone compared the various 65816 C compilers (Orca, WDC, TCC)?
> > 
> > I am wondering what C compilers people are using, and the pros & cons of each.
> > 
> > -JB
> > @JBrooksBSI

"ORCA/C is the only choice for IIgs C programming."

Okay. I spent about 9 months fighting with Orca/C while porting "The Hunt For Red October" from Amiga to GS in 1988/89. The Orca C bugs, implementation oddities (char was unsigned), and the glacially slow linker made C development a real pain.

I ended up writing my own fast linker and then rewriting chunks of the game in assembly before moving on to do Rastan GS.

I was hoping for newer compiler tech today than we had in the 1980s, but I guess running on a fast emulator and having a bug-fixed version would make development with Orca C better now.

A clang/llvm option would be ideal but would also be a lot of work and difficult given the 816 limitations.

-JB
@JBrooksBSI

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#4003

Hey John,

Do you feel the recent bug fixes address the issues you had? Also, would you extrapolate on the 816 limitations that would hinder lvvm?

Anthony

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#4004

On 2017-11-12 21:01:01 +0000, Anthony Ortiz said:

> Hey John,
> 
> Do you feel the recent bug fixes address the issues you had? Also, 
> would you extrapolate on the 816 limitations that would hinder lvvm?

If John was using ORCA/C in 1988-89, then he must have been using a 
very early version (probably 1.0 or maybe even a prerelease). There 
really have been a _lot_ of bug fixes and other improvements (including 
faster linkers) since then, so I'd encourage people not to judge the 
current versions of ORCA/C based on experiences from back then.

I agree with Kelvin's assessment that ORCA/C is the only practical 
choice for IIgs C programming, and I think the current versions of it 
(2.1+, and especially the 2.2 beta I've put out) are really quite 
usable. There are still a few bugs, but I don't think they're that bad, 
and if someone tries to write something with ORCA/C and runs into bugs 
that are hindering their work, I'll certainly try to get those bugs 
fixed.

In regard to porting LLVM (or most other portable compiler frameworks) 
to target the 65816, there are several difficulties I think someone 
would face. One major one is the lack of general-purpose registers. 
Most modern compilers are designed to target processors that have at 
least several general-purpose registers, with variables being held in 
registers as they're operated on. The 65xx architecture's 
stack+accumulator design requires a somewhat different style of code. 
It is possible to adapt between these, but doing so in a way that 
generates efficient code might be difficult.
Other issues I can think of include the banked addressing scheme and 
the 16-bit register size. None of these are insurmountable obstacles, 
but they do make things more difficult, particularly if you care about 
generating efficient code.

-- 
Stephen Heumann

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