<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 12:48 PM, Timothe Litt <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:litt@ieee.org" target="_blank">litt@ieee.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><p>I wrote a fair bit of BLISS at various stages of its evolution.
My recollection is:<br>
</p>
<p>BLISS-10 & BLISS-11 came from Wulf & Co at CMU. BLISS-10
is self-hosted</p></div></blockquote><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#0000ff">Right - Wulf, Steve Hobbs et al, FWIW: I just had lunch with Steve a few minutes ago.</font></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><p>.<br>
</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>Most software written in BLISS-10 & -11 was converted to
common BLISS.</p>
<p>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.</p></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"></font><font color="#0000ff"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">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. </font></font><span style="color:rgb(0,0,255);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">(I've sent him email to make sure and if I'm miss-informed I'll update). </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,255);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span></div><div class="gmail_default"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">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.</font></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Clem</font></font></div></div><br></div></div><div hspace="streak-pt-mark" style="max-height:1px"><img alt="" style="width:0px;max-height:0px;overflow:hidden" src="https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=aY2xlbWNAY2NjLmNvbQ%3D%3D&type=zerocontent&guid=757aa32f-fd01-4cc1-bcab-231a1e851823"><font color="#ffffff" size="1">ᐧ</font></div>