[Simh] BLISS ( was Re: 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access))

[Clem Cole]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 12:48 PM, Timothe Litt <litt at ieee.org> wrote:

> I wrote a fair bit of BLISS at various stages of its evolution.  My
> recollection is:
>
> BLISS-10 & BLISS-11 came from Wulf & Co at CMU.  BLISS-10 is self-hosted
>
​Right - Wulf, Steve Hobbs et al,  FWIW: I just had lunch with Steve a few
minutes ago.​

> .
>
> BLISS-11 is an evolution of BLISS-10.  There was a PDP10-hosted version of
> BLISS-11.  I don't think it was ported to VAX.
>
> BLISS-36,-16,-32,-32E,-64E, MIPS, INTEL, IA64, are DEC's common BLISS -
> evolved (and greatly extended) from BLISS-11, but not (really)
> source-compatible for non-trivial programs.  "common" means that (with
> carefully defined exceptions that can be conditionally compiled), the same
> language is accepted by all, and it's possible to write portable programs.
> Including common BLISS itself.  RMS-10/20 is another non-trivial example -
> same sources as VAX/RMS.  There are a number of targets and host
> environment combinations that are supported.
>
> BLISS-16 is hosted on both PDP-10 and VAX, producing PDP-11 object code.
> I used both.  I didn't encounter an Alpha-hosted version - but it should
> have compiled & run there, so it probably existed.  Or was VESTed.
>
> Most software written in BLISS-10 & -11 was converted to common  BLISS.
>
> There was an attempt at self-hosting BLISS-16, but it failed -
> technically, it ran, but there really wasn't enough address space to make
> it usable.  Cross-compiling wasn't popular (networks were crude), so
> BLISS-16 was not as widely adopted.
>

​This follows my recollection/understanding with the minor tweak of
addition being BLISS-INTEL64 (not to be confused with IA64), which is what
the VMS, Inc for using now for the new OVMS port to Intel*64 systems.   I
believe that is currently running on an Alpha and cross-compiling, but Neil
Faiman (one of the authors) was not at the usual 'compiler group Friday
lunch' today to ask.  Last I knew it was not 100% self hosting, although I
think Neil has also said he had the development running on his Mac.   So he
may be cross compiling from a Mac not OVMS/Alpha - which would all testing
on his laptop.   (I've sent him email to make sure and if I'm miss-informed
I'll update).

The other thing to add is there were at least two generations of the
compilers within DEC that I knew about.  Tim you may have know of a third
when I was off doing other things.   The last (current) is the 'Gem'
compilers which was a rewrite to allow N font-ends, with Y back-ends.   I
thought 'Compatible BLISS' was done to create BLISS-36/16/32 (PDP-10, 11,
Vax) from the original CMU base; but was only targeting BLISS.   AFAIK, the
original Compatible BLISS compiler was developed on the PDP-10 and
eventually replaced the CMU code.  Prism forced the rewrite of the
back-ends and with it the later generation and TLG wanted to clean up its
act with a single back-end/optimizer that was common for all the languages
[hence the Gem project - I'd have to ask Rich Grove for the details].
IIRC, Vax was used as the base for that system, although it moved to Alpha
by the mid/late 1990s.

Clem

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