Expectations around COBOL platform support

[Andrew C Aitchison]

On Tue, 1 Apr 2025, Matthew R. Wilson wrote:
>On 04.02.2025 00:44, Sam James wrote:
>> The original stance of the COBOL maintainers was that they're only
>> really interested in arm64 + x86_64, at least at first(?).
>> 
>> I think we've succeeded in somewhat changing their mind, or at
>> least in convincing them to accept changes that make porting to
>> other targets easier (some of this is free while porting to GCC
>> conventions and so on).
>
> That's good -- given the broad set of platforms GCC is used on,
> adding a language such as COBOL for only x86_64 and arm64 seems like
> it wouldn't be quite ready for merging into a release yet. (I
> know...I need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Real
> World where x86_64 and arm64 covers the vast majority of what people
> care about these days.)

I would hope that there was interest in s/390 and/or zSeries
since (I assume) there is another COBOL compiler to compare with.

Yes, I know that getting access to such machines wont be trivial.

-- 
Andrew C. Aitchison                      Kendal, UK
                    andrew@aitchison.me.uk