C compiler for pdp-11 under RSX

[dan at idis.UUCP]

A mild defense of Whitesmith's C compiler:

I have been using a slightly old version of the Whitesmiths
C compiler for several years.  I have stumbled across a few
circumstances in which it generates bad code, but for the
most part it does just fine.  I have occaisonally investigated
other people's complaints about Whitesmith's C and have often
found that the compaints were about behavior that was unexpected
but not actually wrong.  For example, Whitesmith's C requires
that global variables be initialized in one source file.  This
is really a requirement of the RSX task builder (the  RSX linkage
editor) and I cannot fault Whitesmith's C for using the standard
RSX task builder.  Other typical complaints are about the
Whitesmith's I/O library (not like the UNIX "standard I/O
library") or the C preprocessor (allows at most one include file
library directory; does not understand "../").  Gee guys, If you
wanted UNIX you should have bought UNIX (instead of RSX).

The worst thing I would say about the Whitesmith's C compiler
for RSX is that it doesn't always complain about bad source
code (garbage in ... garbage out) and is a little bit
version 6ish.

I have had much worse experiences with the DECUS C compiler
(thought pointer variables took up zero bytes and didn't
understand that casts implied conversion; no macros with
arguments!).  I believe some of these problems have been
fixed.  Does anyone know where I can get a current version
of the DECUS C compiler?  I want to use it with my RSX emulator
to build RSX binaries on my UNIX system.  Everything I get
directly from DECUS seems to be out of date.  Does anyone
know of a public domain task builder for RSX?

				Dan Strick
				[decvax|mcnc]!idis!dan
				(412) 624-2135
				(412) 624-5218