[HN Gopher] Whitesmiths C compiler: One of the earliest commerci...
___________________________________________________________________
Whitesmiths C compiler: One of the earliest commercial C compilers
available
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 89 points
Date : 2025-06-23 14:25 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| sizzzzlerz wrote:
| That brings back some memories from my early days. I worked on a
| project that had decided to use the newish C language for a
| 68000-based system. They chose Whitesmith compiler for it,
| probably because it was the only one available. For some reason,
| I was selected to attend a class on learning C and became
| responsible for installing the compiler and assisting the other
| engineers on using it. The project was ultimately successful but
| I don't recall what issues we had with it. I do remember
| contacting Whitesmith a couple of times to resolve some problems.
| I guess it possible I was talking directly to P.J. Plauger
| himself, although, at that time, I would have had no idea who he
| was.
| vaxman wrote:
| ..directly while also visualizing his neck veins xD
| TomMasz wrote:
| I remember using that compiler for M68K in the mid-80s, cross-
| compiling on a DEC Vax. The debug monitor we were using only
| displayed hex, no disassembly. The compiler was so predictable
| that I could locate the memory location for any C statement
| easily. It made patching code in memory a simple task.
| julian55 wrote:
| It brings back memories for me too. This compiler was my first
| introduction to C, before that I'd used Pascal or Fortran. I
| worked on Z80 but we also had a 68K project which ran
| Whitesmith's Idris UNIX clone before we got real System III
| ported
| vaxman wrote:
| Mind. Blown.
|
| On DEC systems, I programmed using FORTRAN, BLISS, MACRO and (on
| GiGi and RSTS/E) in BASIC for a long time.. then one day the Bell
| Labs spinoff I worked for bought a Whitesmith's C license for the
| VAXcluster (for probably oodles of money) and I was transferred
| into a group headed by the guy who wrote UNIX's malloc
| implementation a long time before I came along. He hated VMS as
| much as I hated C. He couldn't use UNIX because it only ran on
| dogshit computers. I couldn't use FORTRAN because someone read a
| book that said C was cool. We all carried around our K&R pamphlet
| books and the Whitesmith's manual (which the Indian workers would
| mispronounce with three syllables lol). The compiler had all
| kinds of issues on VMS. Eventually, DEC released VAX-11 C (still
| have my little 5x7" orange book) and that was enough to make me
| give up (the truly wonderful) VAX FORTRAN and MACRO/BLISS
| compilers. My home setup (it was not common for anyone to have
| home setups then, even programmers) was all assembler, FORTH,
| Pascal and BASIC but with the shift to C at work, I finally sold
| a kidney and bought Lattice C and later Aztec C and after moving
| to the Mac (as I sealed my Amigas into the boxes in the garage
| where they remain to this day), MPW C, THINK C and CodeWarrior C,
| MS Visual C, before Yggdrasil Linux...GNU C, then GNU Objective C
| and now (needle scratch silence) Swift? All started with
| Whitesmith's C...
| eej71 wrote:
| I'm old. I instantly recognized your username.
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| If any of those Amigas had a battery backed clock, please
| remove the batteries at the earliest opportunity and neutralise
| the area affected by any leakage with a mild acid such as lemon
| juice. They'll almost certainly have leaked by now but the
| longer it's left the worse the damage will be.
| gjvc wrote:
| Absolutely this. The Varta batteries of the 1990s have
| inflicted awful irrepebal damage on many systems of the time.
| Especially sad when people thought they were keeping them
| safe in their attic and then unpacked them to find the
| motherboard full of dead components.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > Eventually, DEC released VAX-11 C
|
| A bit raw, with floating point bugs in libm ...
| secondcoming wrote:
| I remember seeing his name in some Windows header files and
| always wondered who that person was. Cool.
| SeanCline wrote:
| Specifically, you'll find his name in the C++ Standard Library
| headers. Microsoft licensed their standard library from
| Dinkumware.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._Plauger#Dinkumware
| mrec wrote:
| Oh wow, I never knew he was an award-winning SF author too. I
| remember a couple of exchanges with him on the
| comp.lang.c++.moderated group back in the day.
| jockm wrote:
| I hope one day the source for Whitesmiths unix clone Idris gets
| released. IIRC it was the first unix clone, and it would just be
| nice to have that preserved for history
| tomsmeding wrote:
| Seems you're in luck! Clicking around on the github page of the
| posted link, one finds https://github.com/hansake/Whitesmiths-
| Idris-OS .
| jockm wrote:
| That is just the binaries, unless I am very much mistaken. I
| was (trying to) refer to the sources as well
| icedchai wrote:
| Those look like binaries, not source code?
| chubot wrote:
| Replaying a good comment from lobsters!
| https://lobste.rs/s/ybarpv/whitesmiths_c_compiler_one_earlie...
|
| > You might also enjoy the Advent Of Computing podcast episode
| about IDRIS, Whitesmiths' UNIX clone. History of the company and
| the compiler included, because they're all related.
|
| https://adventofcomputing.com/
|
| https://youtu.be/UeZpKgtRfx0
| ok123456 wrote:
| Take a look at some of his other repositories. There's one that
| has basically every CP/M programming tool.
| mzs wrote:
| still have code with this indentation style here:
| https://github.com/hansake/Whitesmiths-C-compiler/blob/main/...
| DamonHD wrote:
| I have always used (ie since the mid '80s) something like WS
| layout for C and its descendants. Only much later did I hear
| that name for it. Often unfashionable, but I have also been a
| magazine editor, and like the braces to visually lead the eye
| down the edge of the code that they surround, like a non-
| indented text para.
| mzs wrote:
| I prefer the Sun extensions to Indian Hill for grepability
| but I see the appeal especially to folks that came from
| pascal. Look closely at the example echo.c, thats not
| "#include <stdio.h>" ;) We still have this included in lots
| of code where I work since it dates from around 1980:
| % grep '/\*' std.h /* std.h header file to allow use of
| Whitesmiths pseudo classes/types. */ /* the pseudo
| storage classes /* the pseudo types /* system
| parameters %
|
| And yes for me there are ~600 files I still regularly work in
| written in WS style.
| b0a04gl wrote:
| file layout is the interface here lol you can literally walk the
| pipeline.. lexer parser codegen linker all just sit where they
| should. the dir was the flow. back then structure = filesystem.
| we can cd trace src to bin just by lookin at folders
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-06-27 23:00 UTC)