COBOL Language Front End Merged for GCC 15 Compiler
The COBOL front-end has been merged into GCC 15, enhancing support for the language with over 134,000 lines of code, facilitating migration of legacy applications to Linux, with a stable release expected soon.
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The COBOL programming language front-end has been successfully merged into the upcoming GCC 15 compiler, marking a significant development in the GNU Compiler Collection. This addition, consisting of over 134,000 lines of code, aims to enhance COBOL support, which has seen renewed interest despite the language's declining popularity in favor of newer languages like Rust. The integration of the COBOL front-end, accessible via the gcobol command, is intended to facilitate the migration of traditional mainframe applications to Linux environments, both locally and in the cloud. This development follows years of out-of-tree code development and is part of a broader effort to modernize and support legacy systems. The new features, including the COBOL front-end and related documentation, are expected to be part of the stable release of GCC 15.1, anticipated in the coming weeks.
- The COBOL front-end for GCC 15 has been merged, enhancing support for the language.
- The integration consists of over 134,000 lines of code.
- The gcobol command will be used to invoke the COBOL compiler front-end.
- The effort aims to assist in migrating legacy mainframe applications to Linux.
- The stable release of GCC 15.1 is expected soon, featuring this new support.
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3 commentsIf this has happened 30 years ago, I think enterprise Linux would have hit the scene earlier. There were thousands of COBOL programmers in the 90s who were looking to create ERP type systems. If that had happened, maybe we would not be saddled with outrageously expensive systems like SAP and Oracle.
With IBM owning RHEL, you would thing IBM would offer a free COBOL, or at least help out with this.
Curious, with this still be a translation to c or native ? To me seems to be a translation, which seems to be working fine today.
A unixy cobol isn’t what anyone needs for mainframe migrations. There’s a lot of weirdness around calling and linking “load modules” in mainframe environments, and calling programs via jcl (passing in file handles). Plus Will CICS support be coming? Maybe someone more knowledgeable can comment on these thing?
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