4.5 What compilers (assemblers) are there?
Description
This article is from the Amiga FAQ, by Ignaz Kellerer with numerous contributions by others.
4.5 What compilers (assemblers) are there?
There is a lot of programming languages on the Amiga, commercial as well as freely distributable. I will enumerate only those that I know or which seem it worth to me otherwise.
*Assembler* All C-compilers have an Assembler included. Freely distributable are A68K and PhxAss (directory `dev/asm' on Aminet or Fish disks 521 and 906)
Commercial Assemblers are MaxonASM, OMA3.0 and DevPack3.14.
*Basic* The following commercial Basic-compiler/interpreter are available: BlitzBasic2, Amos and MaxonBasic3.
*C* *C++* Freely distributable C-compilers are `gcc' (which has its own directory `dev/gcc' on Aminet) and the evaluation version of `Dice' (for example per FTP from `ftp.uni-paderborn.de', directory `/news/comp.binaries.amiga/volume91/languages' or on Fish disk 491). The advantage of gcc is that you find gcc versions all over the world and on all computer systems. Another advantage is that C++ is included into gcc! But it is slow and needs 4Mb of RAM or more. See The GNU C compiler. See Mailing lists.
Commercial C compilers are `Aztec-C', `Dice', `SAS/C' amd `MaxonC++'. `Aztec-C' doesn't seem to get further development any more. It should be remarked that the commercial compilers have especially wonderful debugging utilities (Source level debuggers!) that the others are missing.
SAS has announced to drop support of the Amiga-Compiler, too, due to the Amiga's bad situation. However, the compiler is still available and up-to-date and has a crosscompiler included, which translates C++ to C and supports the source level debugger too. Considering the price of just 99$ for students and updates from recent versions or other compilers it is still the most recommendable of the three. In europe the compiler is available from SAS Institute, Inc. SAS Institute Gmbh Book Sales PO Box 10 53 40 SAS Campus Drive 69043 Heidelberg Cary, NC 27513 Germany USA
Phone: (919)677-8000 Phone: (49)6221-4160 EMail: sasdsb@vm.sas.com EMail: eurdoc2@vm.sas.com
Dice is the cheapest and fastest commercial compiler. The greatest disadvantage of Dice (compared to the other commercial compilers) is the so-called Source-Line-Debugger: This means that you see the current line of source and can execute the program step by step, like with the other debuggers. On the other hand you can examine memory only, not the variables. To get information about DICE, send email to info@oic.COM. An automatic system will return complete details, including upgrade prices.
Comeau C++ is a crosscompiler like SAS/C++. That wouldn't be a problem, but Comeau C++ doesn't have a C compiler included. You need SAS/C, Aztec-C or Dice additionally. But it is AT&T cfront 3.0 compliant and supports exceptions. And like gcc it runs on many platforms. Maxxon C++ is offered in Germany. I cannot say anything on it. Both compilers are commercial. Comeau's address is: Comeau computing 91-34, 120th Street Richmond Hill, NY, 11418-3214 USA
EMail: Greg Comeau, comeau@bix.com
Maxon C++ is both a C++ and a C compiler. There is a light version and a developer version. The developer version matches the AT&T standard 3.0. Maxon-light includes a compiler and a editor. Developer includes a source level debugger, Amiga classes library and Hot Help with documentation to the amiga libs. It is a german product, and compiler and documentation are german. The compiler has some little bugs, but you can work with it well, anyway.
*Forth* JForth is said to be an excellent Amiga port of Forth. Among its advantages are object oriented extensions, full Amiga interface and an application generator. It is available from: Delta Research P.O. Box 151051 San Rafael, CA 94915-1051
Phone: (415) 453-4320 EMail: Phil Burk, phil@ntg.com Mike Haas, haas@starnine.com
*Fortran* (Sigh! Still people who need it :-<) Freely distributable are BCF (Fish disk 470) and f2c, a Fortran to C converter (Aminet, directory `/dev/lang'). A commercial compiler is offered from ABSoft. All these are Fortran 77 compilers, I don't know any Fortran 90 compiler on the Amiga.
*Lisp* Freely distributable Lisp interpreters are XLisp (Fish disk 181) and OakLisp (Fish disks 519 and 520) and CLISP (`/pub/lisp/clisp/binaries/amiga' at the server `ftp ma2s2.mathematik.uni-karlsruhe.de'). Lisp compilers are Gambit (Fish 764 and 765) and Scheme-to-C (Fish disks 556, 557 and 558). See Mailing lists.
*Prolog* `/dev/lang/UNSWProlog.lha' and `dev/lang/sbp3_1e.lha' on Aminet as well as `SBProlog' on Fish disk 141 and `SBProlog' on Fish disk 145 are freely distributable Prolog interpreters.
*Modula-2* M2Amiga is offered in Europe, Benchmark Modula-2 in the U.S. Both are said to be very good, have a powerful source-level-debugger, a large library. Especially M2Amiga has great support by a german user-group (AMOK) which for example offers own PD disks. See Mailing lists.
M2Amiga is offered by: A+L AG Daderiz 61 2540 Grenchen Schweiz
Tel.: +41/65/52 03-11 Fax: -79
Benchmark Modula-2 is available from: Armadillo Computing 5225 Marymount Drive Austin, Texas 78723 USA
Phone/FAX: 512/926-0360. EMail: Jim Olinger, jolinger@bix.com
*Oberon* *Oberon-2* Two compilers (both Oberon-2) are available: AmigaOberon (commercial) is offered by the same company as M2Amiga. It is integrated into a full developers environment and has a large library of modules. Library linker and source level debugger are available.
Oberon-A is a Freeware compiler. (Source: Aminet, `dev/obero' directory) However, this is a beta release, especially the module library is limited. See Mailing lists.
The AMOK user group supports AmiOberon as well as M2Amiga.
In addition to these two standalone compilers which are thought mainly for creating AmigaOS applications, there is an Amiga port of the Oberon Sytem V4, too. The Oberon System is implemented as an AmigaOS-Task using a separate screen and includes an Oberon-2 compiler. You can use it to write software that will work on all implementations of the Oberon System V4 (for example Macintosh, Windows or Sparc) without any changes.
*Pascal* There is a PD-compiler called PCQ (Directory `dev/lang' on Aminet or Fish disk 511). It doesn't support all of Pascal and major features are missing. P2C, a pascal to C converter is on disk 341. (Aminet: `/dev/misc/p2c120.lha') Additionally there are two commercial compilers called HiSoft Pascal and KickPascal. HiSoft Pascal and P2C claim to be compatible to Turbo Pascal up to 5.0. HiSoft has a source level debugger included.
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