Modula-2 Language Frontend Merged Into GCC 13

Yesterday it was the GCC Rust front-end "gccrs" being merged into the GNU Compiler Collection codebase for GCC 13. Today the Modula-2 language front-end also made it over the finish line.

The Modula-2 front-end for GCC has been in development for years and has finally reached mainline for this aging programming language. Modula-2 is one of the languages developed by Niklaus Wirth in the 1980s as a procedural programming language that succeeded his earlier work on Modula and most notably Pascal. Modula-2 was succeeded by Modula-3 and Oberon but some passionate developers have kept up with Modula-2 and persevered with this GCC compiler support.

Modula-2 code sample.

Earlier this month the Modula-2 front-end was approved for merging while today that milestone was crossed with it being merged to Git master.

So should you be interested in Modula-2 language support, it will be found in the GCC 13 compiler release due for release in March~April of next year. Adding the Modula-2 front-end to the GCC codebase inflates the size by 541k lines of code consisting of the compiler support, tests, and related infrastructure.

This now takes GCC to having language front-ends for C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Ada, Go, D, Rust, and now Modula-2.