Patches Posted For Review Adding COBOL Frontend To GCC Compiler

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Patches Posted For Review Adding COBOL Frontend To GCC Compiler

The COBOL programming language may be 65 years old since its original release but the mainline GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) in 2025 might finally see upstream support for it...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/COBOL-For-GCC-Patches-EOY2024

[bug77]

This only had 4 new versions in the last 20 years, I'm surprised there is anything to add at this point.

[archkde]

While COBOLs main users may not particularly care about this and it's pretty late, I still think it's great to finally see support for a language of this importance in a major free compiler project.

[gotar]

While COBOLs main users may not particularly care about this

You mean - being dead?

[oiaohm]

You mean - being dead?

https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/press-room/press-releases/2022/cobol-market-shown-to-be-three-times-larger-than-previously-estimated-in-new-independent-survey

Cobol is not dead unfortunately. Over 800 billion lines of cobol code in use by businesses.

Yes a good chunk out of the 3 to 4 trillion lines of code in production usage is Cobol.

Also the most current version of the Cobol language is COBOL 2023. Yes the Cobol language is still being updated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCOBOL

Also its not like we have been without a Gnu Cobol all this time. GnuCOBOL appears in 2002 and has been updated all this time. This is a Cobol to C convertor.

Yes Cobol in gcc will cut a step out for those using Cobol with open source compilers to make native system binaries.. GNu cobol is more complete than this newer gcobol

Yes three open source Cobol compliers in use the oldest and most complete Gnu Cobol,
Next oldest is otterkit

https://otterkit.com/docs

Yes otterkit is Cobol to .net
And finally this newer gcobol item.

[stormcrow]

You mean - being dead?

COBOL isn't dead. Far from it. But the problem with the language and its ecosystem is that it hasn't really grown beyond the proprietary systems and dialects from 40-50 years ago. There's no real standardization to the existing deployments. You can't necessarily learn from a modern course and jump right in programming like you can say Small Talk or Fortran. GNU COBOL isn't the same as the dialects that were deployed on mainframes, minicomputers, etc from the 70s and 80s. Each of the legacy deployments have their own vendor specific dialects that were at least partly dependent on the hardware that hosted them. You have to go back, learn the context of the program logic, learn the specific dialect that version of COBOL has, and the original underlying hardware it was deployed on before you can touch a single line of code. On the other hand, that's why people that can understand and write dialect COBOL are in demand and highly paid. It requires a mental flexibility and/or not caring about New & Shiny many programmers no longer possess.

[jacob]

Following up on stormcrow, I know that COBOL-based software is still in use (lots of it), but does any of it actually run in production on modern CPU architectures and OSes? If not then one may question the point of supporting COBOL in GCC if in practice COBOL is only useful on target platforms that GCC either doesn't support, or will drop in the foreseeable future.

[oiaohm]

Following up on stormcrow, I know that COBOL-based software is still in use (lots of it), but does any of it actually run in production on modern CPU architectures and OSes? If not then one may question the point of supporting COBOL in GCC if in practice COBOL is only useful on target platforms that GCC either doesn't support, or will drop in the foreseeable future.

https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/press-room/press-releases/2022/cobol-market-shown-to-be-three-times-larger-than-previously-estimated-in-new-independent-survey

This here is a survey in 2022 looking at cobol usage and found 800 billion lines of cobol used in production on modern CPU and architectures. Total cobol code written is in the trillions of lines of code.

[darkonix]

Following up on stormcrow, I know that COBOL-based software is still in use (lots of it), but does any of it actually run in production on modern CPU architectures and OSes? If not then one may question the point of supporting COBOL in GCC if in practice COBOL is only useful on target platforms that GCC either doesn't support, or will drop in the foreseeable future.

There are too many platforms to be sure but I know that AS/400s (now called IBM I or something) uses POWER CPUs. Depends on the definition of old that you use

[ayumu]

Following up on stormcrow, I know that COBOL-based software is still in use (lots of it), but does any of it actually run in production on modern CPU architectures and OSes? If not then one may question the point of supporting COBOL in GCC if in practice COBOL is only useful on target platforms that GCC either doesn't support, or will drop in the foreseeable future.

You're looking at it in a weird manner.

COBOL being supported in GCC eases the transition from whatever legacy platforms to RISC-V.