GNU Cim improvement project by NTNU

[Erik Nyhus]

To whom it may concern,

I am writing because I have been hired by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) to do work on the GNU Cim compiler. My responsibilities include:

• Making the compiler build easily and correctly on systems used by NTNU students using standard tools—e.g. Clang on OS X.
• Providing simple and native installation paths for students, including deb, Homebrew, and MacPorts packages.
• Improving compiler diagnostics, especially parser errors, but also other elements.
• Investigating and fixing compiler bugs reported by NTNU staff and students.
• Documenting the internals of the compiler for future use and development.

NTNU has given me permission to provide code and documentation upstream to the GNU Cim project if this is of interest to the current maintainer(s), as well as comply with any requirements the maintainer(s) may have for such work to be included upstream as long as this aligns with NTNU’s goals. I therefore write to ask whether this work is of interest to the GNU Cim project, or if I should create a fork of the compiler.

In addition I am wondering if there exists some out-of-tree documentation on the internals of the compiler. Such documentation need not be up-to-date nor comprehensive. More specifically I have discovered references to the following two documents without having been able to find copies available online. Any pointers on whether these documents are relevant, and optionally where I would be able to find copies would be greatly appreciated. I will be contacting the University of Oslo Library in the coming week to see if they are able to help with the same.

Sverre Hvammen Johansen. Et portabelt Simula-system bygget på C.
Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, 1987

Terje Mjøs. Videreføring og testing av et portabelt Simula-system.
Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, 1989.

Thank you for your consideration, I look forward to hearing from you.

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Best Regards
Erik Nyhus