Compilers Tutorials/Papers Libs/Sources Newsgroups FAQ Forums/Lists
GNU Modula-2 Modula-2 CGI Tutorial Howto Setup a Fine Modula-2 Environment Programming with Modula-2 Misc. Modula-2 Related Pages Not-English Modula-2 Pages Downloads Please Sign My Guestbook Code Search
04/16/2012
Latest changes to GNU Modula-2 have been reported to the gm2 mailing list.
A lot of in my opinion very interesting issues of USUS, a newsletter published in the 80s and early 90s by the UCSD Pascal System User's Society, are available via ftp from a server run by Western Horizon Technologies, a company offering consulting and professional staffing services. The files are all in pdf format and quite big but nevertheless interesting - mostly historic information but also code snippets etc. I remember some parts of the MODUS Quarterly Newsletter (another newsletter from back then) was made available by CFB Software in 2010. I also remember (what kind of information is in my head?) an article published in the same newsletter with the title "Automatic export of identifiers from the definition module" by Arthur Sale. I found this one searching for MODUS content in 2009. As always in such cases let me ask: Does anyone have more?
04/14/2012
Ten years ago (april 10th) I uploaded a collection of links related to Modula-2. I was just tired to search for sources, compilers and online tutorials which weren't there anymore. Dead communities, disappeared homepages and broken links were symptomatic for a dying language back then. Today the situation is much better, but still not good - a number of free compilers of professional quality are available now and may change this in the long run. The small community (more and more people ask questions or contact me in the last few years) around the language seems to be growing steadily. At this point I just want to say thank you to all who have contributed to my effort to keep a good online ressource for the language Modula-2 alive and up to date. Your help was and is appreciated.
Most of us know Modula-2 is there for over 30 years now. Those who remember or even played the game (which was very popular once) may be interested in a short video demonstrating Oxyd, a game written for the AtariST in 1990 by Meinolf Amekudzi (Schneider). Of course it was written in Modula-2 (Megamax Modula-2 is still available).
03/15/2012
ADW Modula-2 version 2.38 has been released two days ago. The release fixes a bug with some REAL functions on x64.
03/11/2012
Tom Breeden announced the release of a new version (3.2 Beta) of Aglet Modula-2. For those who don't know, Aglet Modula-2 is a compiler generating native PPC code for Amiga OS4. The IDE has got new features, modules were updated and some bugs were fixed. Find more information by visiting the original home of the compiler or consult the changelog.
03/02/2012
Ok, it seems I still have to get used to the fact there are a few more places to check for news related to Modula-2 recently. And new ones still appear. I completely missed the release of ADW Modula-2 2.31 in january. Well, here is the announcement. There were some fixes and smaller changes in look and feel.
Julian Miglio kindly pointed me to the Embedded Graphic Environment Manager (Egem) which he maintains. "Egem is a graphic enviroment manager library, it has been designed for writing software for high integrity applications. It is not intended to be an operating system, but a simple and generic graphic interface that gives the user an easy way to interact with complex electronic machines." The Modula-2 version was written for GPM Modula-2 for DOS. Having the new homepage of Egem I removed the related files from the local download area.
02/15/2012
Latest changes to GNU Modula-2 have been reported to the gm2 mailing list.
02/10/2012
The beta package of XDS Modula-2/Oberon-2 by Excelsior has been updated recently. Some issues brought up by users of the compiler were adressed.
01/31/2012
Recently I read an article which mentioned an implementation of the programming language Modula. First I thought this was the often used and usual short form of Modula-2 but reading on I found a reference to the University of York Modula Compiler. Well, I got very interested and did some investigative searching as I was quite sure until now that Modula was never used (I wasn't even sure if it was implemented). I found lots of articles and other interesting stuff and decided to put the information into the local FAQ. There was even an operating system written in Modula-1 - as it was sometimes called later, when Modula-2 was taking over.
01/23/2012
Every now and then I receive questions via email asking for operating systems written in Modula-2. Recently I stumbled across Panos and some papers which I added to the appropriate section of the local FAQ. While updating this section I found out Gaius Mulley, developer of GNU Modula-2, wrote a microkernel called LUK which is used to teach students the principles of microkernels. LUK runs on x86 PC hardware and boots from a USB memory stick. Follow the link above to get more information and a download link.
01/07/2012
Recently I (once again) read an interview with Niklaus Wirth back from 2009. If I remember it right I found the link visiting the homepage of Jan Verhoeven who also provides a link to the opening talk of Mr. Wirth at GTAC 2009. Now I found a new (2011) interview coming in three parts (one, two, three). Christian Timmerer, Niklaus Wirth and Laszlo Böszörmenyi discuss a lot of topics including the main problems of software development today. With these films I wish you a happy new year -
12/29/2011
Really, I didn't think there would be more (great) news to be posted this year. But today I received a message from Dmitry Leskov entitled "XDS 2.6 beta - Your Least Expected New Year Present" which I partly quote here: "This was meant to be our Christmas gift to the Modula-2 community, but I have an excuse for being late: the Orthodox Christmas observed in our country comes _after_ the New Year, so we are more used here to give and receive New Year gifts.
Since releasing XDS under a freeware license back in 2005, we have completed a handful of related custom projects. Those projects ranged from complete toolchains targeting specialized embedded platforms to automatic Modula-2 to C++ converters to minor customer-specific tweaks and enhancements. We have also added keyboard macros to the IDE for our own convenience, and, of course, we have encountered and fixed a number of bugs in the process of working on all that.
To cut the long story short, we have just released XDS 2.6 beta incorporating some of the fixes, IDE macros and Open Watcom support in XDS-C."
Packages for Windows and Linux are available from Excelsior's homepage.
12/11/2011
Now this is great (and surprising) news. ADW Modula-2, successor of Stony Brook Modula-2, is now available at modula2.org. The compiler has been released as freeware. Details from the download page: (1) ADW Modula-2 is for Windows only, (2) ADW Modula-2 allows development of both 32- and 64-bits programs on the Windows platform, (3) no support is given, neither by ADW Software, nor by modula2.org.
[Update:] Let me get this straight. I should have written more than a few lines to announce this release. But I didn't have enough time last sunday. So let me add: This is an amazing development system, not "only" a compiler. The documentation is really nice, the libraries are extensive. The package can be recommended to everyone using Windows only. It's a pity the Linux compiler wasn't released with the Windows version. Stony Brook used to be a cross platform development system. But. I don't want to be unhumble - thanks a lot for the release!
12/10/2011
I thought I know all operating systems written in Modula-2. Now I found out about Panos, an operating system developed by Acorn Computers in the 1980s (information from computinghistory.org.uk), which ran on the 32016 Second Processor for the BBC Micro and the Acorn Cambridge Workstation. Of course this is of historical interest only. For those interested there is a lot of information including pictures and manuals available from Chris's Acorns.
Acorn also developed ARX, an operating system written in Modula-2+ (a predecessor of Modula-3). There is an interesting email about Acorn's involvement with Modula2. I post the link here because the information was very enlighting for me. You get to know the complete line between the ETH Modula-2 compiler and the development of Modula-3 by DEC and Olivetti. I didn't even know Acorn was part of this line...
11/16/2011
The design of a free CSN API model is a paper by Gaius Mulley describing a project implemented using GNU Modula-2, Python and C. "Python is to be used to parse the specification file, allocate processes to processors and initiate execution of a process on a remote processor. GNU Modula-2 is to be used to implement the CSN library. GNU Modula-2 will utilise the portable GNU Pthreads via its coroutine library. GNU C will be used to interface between GNU Modula-2 and various library routines under GNU/Linux." The latest tarball (04/2010) csn-0.5.tar.gz is available from floppsie.comp.glam.ac.uk.
10/27/2011
After a long time I updated the list of available compilers. And I installed YAZE-AG - Yet Another Z80 Emulator by Andreas Gerlich (V 2.20.1). I downloaded the Windows (and later the Linux) binaries and found a nice environment, great documentation and a preinstalled disc M:\ which contains Turbo Modula-2! The compiler works out of the box (picture). Amazing! Some of us will remember Turbo Pascal 3 and FST Modula-2 -
While looking through the list of compilers I updated some links in the Amiga and Atari sections. So I found out st-computer.net seems to have disappeared with all the Modula-2 compilers which were available from that site. Does anyone have more information (or do you have the compiler packages so we can make them available)?
10/03/2011
GNU Modula-2 1.0.4 is available now. This is a bugfix release. Binaries for x86_32 and x86_64 are also there as well as a list of latest changes. As a sidenote Gaius Mulley informs that he works on grafting gm2 onto gcc 4.6.1.
[Update:] An updated binary build of GNU Modula-2 1.0.4 for Cygwin/Windows is available from the download area.
09/18/2011
Have you ever heard of the Modular Universe? No, I am not talking about a philosophy of Modula-2 enthusiasts explaining the universe. I want to bring attention to the interesting projects of Dr. Maurer who develops Murus for a long time now. A lot of modules are available (GPL licensed), including examples for using X and OpenGL. The docs are extensive. Dr. Maurer uses the Mocka compiler and provides an own version which is easier to use in some aspects. As Murus is written in german language, Jan Verhoeven translated some parts of Murus to make them available to the rest of the world in the Murus section of his Modula-2 pages.
09/08/2011
An updated version (2.37) of the Modula-2 FAQ by Rick Sutcliffe is available. Changes according to the announcement: "A link checker revealed some twenty dead or inaccessible links. All have been ruthlessly removed, and some sections renumbered, particularly after 4.8. A new mailing list for Objective Modula-2 is at 2.6. The Amiga Aglet item has been updated. Some additional resource lists have been added after the main bibliography. The GNU information has been updated. ISO compatibility information has been updated. Modula-2 R10 is mentioned in a new question at 1.11."
Reading the FAQ I found a reference to an interesting article by Andrey Koltashev which is available via Google Books (Abstract). Rick Sutcliffe points out Koltashev "discusses the benefits of using Modula-2 for the onboard-software used in Russian telecommunications satellites". I remember the announcement by Excelsior back from 2004 which I guess was related to the same project.
08/27/2011
Roberto Aragón moved his very helpful Modula-2 pages to a new server. The information is in spanish language but mostly usable through tools like online translators. You can view the material as a tutorial to start working with a Modula-2 compiler (Mocka), a good editor (Kate) and an easy to use debugger (GNU DDD which works as a frontend for debuggers). Mr. Aragón also provides a few interesting scripts for better integration of the Modula-2 compiler with Kate. Maybe someone out there wants to provide a translated version of the documents?
07/29/2011
GNU Modula-2 1.0.3 is available now. New binaries for x86_64 (Debian squeeze) are also available. Information about latest changes is also there as well as a newly built gm2-avr package (gm2 built as a cross compiler for the Atmel series of microprocessors).
07/06/2011
Having a hard time with the GNU Build System? Digging through documentation and searching for a M4 macro which looks up GNU Modula-2? Have a look at the sources of Schwarzer Kaffee. Martin Kalbfuss provides the example files to get you started. Schwarzer Kaffee is a SDL wrapper for the GNU Modula-2 compiler utilising the GNU tools. Note: If you are interested in the project and want to use it on the Windows/Cygwin platform you should use gcc3 to build SDL! SDL is not part of the official package collection of Cygwin and doesn't build with gcc4 at the moment.
Speaking of the GNU Build System you may also be interested in the generic Makefile by Duke Normandin and others which has been posted to the GM2 mailing list.
Last but not least latest changes to the 4.1.2 branch of GM2 have been reported to the mailing list. [Update:] Today Gaius Mulley informed (again!) about latest changes to the compiler. "These fixes allow GNU ASM syntax to behave in exactly the same way as the other GCC front ends." Documentation and examples will be provided soon.
06/15/2011
A new binary build of GNU Modula-2 for Cygwin/Windows is available (gcc-4.1.2+gm2-cvs-latest.tar.gz, 06/13/11). I thought it would be helpful for people testing and trying out the compiler to keep the archive up to date.
06/14/2011
Earlier I posted about Modula-2 at CERN. Now I found (thanks to a hint from the compiler list at Modula2.net) a historic document about a Modula-2 to C translator developed by ANSTO (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation) in Australia. People often seemed to experiment with Modula-2 in safety-critical fields. I wondered how the computer looked like which was used to develop the translator. Well, I found a small picture of the box tied to a car...
Other news: Latest fixes to the GNU Modula-2 sources have been reported to the GM2 mailing list.
06/10/2011
There is a relatively new project at GitHub aiming to provide a Modula 2 syntax file and useful abbreviations for Vim (As Vim does Modula-2 syntax highlighting since years I am - as a Vim user - looking forward for the useful abbreviations). This reminded me to post some simple scripts I am using with Vim. Any ideas to improve these? I'd be happy to post your little helpers here -
05/23/2011
Checking the sites of the Modula-2 Webring I found out that a new bugfix release of Aglet Modula-2 is available since april. The release includes fixes for the compiler and some libraries. Aglet Modula-2 is Tom Breeden's Amiga PPC M2 compiler generating native PPC code for Amiga OS4. You may be interested in the documentation (pdf) to find out more.
05/09/2011
Binaries of GNU Modula-2 for the Solaris (64bit sparc) operating system are available now. Latest changes to the compiler have also been reported to the gm2 mailing list.
04/14/2011
As the world of Modula-2 is rather quiet at the moment (with the exception of the great development of GNU Modula-2) I'll drop in a snippet of history. Did you know Modula-2 was used at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research)? For example the language NODAL was once implemented in Modula-2 there. Various documents (example .pdf) can be found.
04/10/2011
Latest changes to GNU Modula-2 have been reported to the gm2 mailing list. The compiler is also (again) available now as a cross compiler for the Atmel microprocessors. This is alpha status software which needs testing and people who are willing and able to try it out. Debian binaries are available for the x86_64 platform. Read the announcement here.
03/13/2011
I really wanted GNU Modula-2 to build under Windows Vista. Now it does (once again). You have to edit one file (usr/include/string.h) of the Cygwin installation to make it work. Read the messages to the gm2 mailing list to learn more. The binary build is available here.
[Update:] I am happy. I installed the Cygwin port of Vim to get a nice development environment. After turning on syntax highlighting I tried to compile some of the GNU Modula-2 examples by typing :make - everything works fine! Don't forget to set the right path.
02/20/2011
GNU Modula-2 has got a nice new website. The much improved documentation of the compiler now comes with sections labelled according to their texinfo nodes. Last but not least you may be interested in latest changes to the compiler sources (mostly reflecting the documentation update).
[Update:] Updated GNU Modula-2 binaries for Debian Squeeze are available now.
01/16/2011
GNU Modula-2 1.0.1 is available now. New binaries for x86_64 and x86_32 debian lenny are also available.
12/12/2010
GNU Modula-2 1.0 has been released yesterday! I know lots of people have contributed to the project (have a look at the archives of the gm2 mailing list to find out more) but it is one man who wrote the compiler and gave friendly and quick support to all people who asked questions or were and are interested in the project. Thank you so much Gaius Mulley. Congratulations to you and thanks to all contributors. Now there is an open source compiler which is able to process all of the dialects of the great language Modula-2 (PIM and ISO). A message about latest changes to the compiler was sent out earlier to the mailing list.
From the GNU Modula-2 homepage: "The GNU Modula-2 compiler is one of a number of front end languages to GCC (GNU Compiler Collection). As such it has been designed to coexist with other GCC languages for example it can be used in mixed language projects and it can catch C++ exceptions and throw exceptions which can be caught by C++. Users can also exploit conditional compilation and full gcc backend optimization and architecture coverage.
GNU Modula-2 can produce position independant code and can easily produce shared libraries from modules. The compiler provides a swig interface file generator option which allows scripting languages such as Python to import modules written in Modula-2 and also catch exceptions thrown by Modula-2."
11/25/2010
Some small changes should improve the GNU Modula-2 user experience. The compiler now behaves similar to the most used GCC front ends (compile and link by simply providing the filename as your only argument). Other recent changes to the compiler have also been reported to the mailing list.
11/15/2010
For German speaking readers: Maybe you remember the script/book about data structures in Modula-2 provided by Prof. Dr. Theo Härder which I pointed to in january. There is another script available (brought to my attention by a kind reader of these pages) about sorting algorithms in Modula-2 written by Ralf Kruber. Well, it is also written in German.
11/02/2010
Jan Verhoeven developed a graphical user interface for the ACK Modula-2 (C, Pascal) compiler. "Normally I'm more a command line person. Still, the ACK has some idosyncracies that may be flattened out by a simple front end. And since Graphical seems to be the word of this era (how else would you like to spoil all these GHz-es and CPU cores?) I set out to create a GUI front end for the ack."
Other news: You may be interested in a generic makefile for use with GNU Modula-2 written by Duke Normandin and improved by Gaius Mulley.
10/26/2010
A new distribution of Gardens Point Modula-2 is available now. "GPM/CLR is an implementation of the historical Gardens-Point Modula-2 compiler for the .NET runtime. It provides an example of how a non-typesafe, unmanaged data compiler may be implemented on the CLR." Some features of Modula-2 have not been implemented. Fewer libraries are available in the distribution as there were some problems due to missing low-level libraries.
I also want to point you to the brave work of some students: Over at Vrije Universiteit Brussel Modula-2 is used as a teaching language (using the XDS Modula-2 compiler). Domination (download) is the award winning game of the year 2010.
10/12/2010
GNU Modula-2 0.99 is available now!
Other news: There is an interesting discussion going on in the GPCP Gardens Point Component Pascal group about the GPM/CLR versions of Gardens Point Modula-2. This may hopefully bring some life to the compiler versions for the Microsoft .NET platform (not to mention the now defunct online compiler). Maybe some of you are interested and want to show that interest in the mentioned group?
Finally: Have you ever asked yourself the question why there are uppercase keywords in Modula-2? While I just naively like the increased readability of my sources here are some very good arguments from a discussion in the Zonnon forum.
09/16/2010
GNU Modula-2 0.98 was released today. 32 and 64 bit binaries are available for Debian and Ubuntu.
08/29/2010
Latest changes to GNU Modula-2 have been reported to the gm2 mailing list. A lot of bugs were fixed and it seems we are approaching version 1.0.
08/05/2010
A new version of The Amsterdam Compiler Kit is available. It was announced in comp.lang.modula2 and comes with a set of warnings about the limitations of the compiler kit (More information about ACK). [Update:] Jan Verhoeven set up a page to get started with the compiler.
07/29/2010
The Objective Modula-2 FAQ has been updated.
And as a sidenote I want to inform you about the release of Critical Mass Modula-3 5.8.6. Not Modula-2, I know, but an interesting language available for a lot of platforms.
07/22/2010
There is a consolidated Modula-2 R10 repository now over at BitBucket.org. The announcement was posted in comp.lang.modula2 some days ago. I want to point out the last paragraph of the message: "Developers and unit testers use the IRC Modula-2 channel on freenode for collaboration, and new members are welcome to join the team (currently five strong)."
Latest changes to GNU Modula-2 have been reported to the gm2 mailing list. Rebuilt packages for Debian are available. You may find the answer to a question about how to use the packages helpful.
07/10/2010
GNU Modula-2 0.92 was released yesterday. All regressions now pass on x86_64 LP64 and i686. Binaries are available for Ubuntu and Debian.
06/26/2010
An updated version of the paper An Overview Of Objective Modula-2 is available from the Objective Modula-2 website. Since Objective Modula-2 is a superset of Modula-2 R10, this document also includes an
introductory section about R10 that is easier to read than the formal language description document I reported about earlier.
GNU Modula-2 0.91 was released a few days ago: "This release fixes two optimization bugs and at least one front end bug. It also includes the ability of users of gm2 to align fields." A complete list of changes to the compiler since version 0.90 is attached to the message.
06/12/2010
Latest changes to GNU Modula-2 have been reported to the gm2 mailing list: gm2-0.90 has been released and it seems we are close to the release of GNU Modula-2 1.0.
The Concise Language Description of Modula-2 R10 is now also available as a well formatted pdf-file. You may also be interested in a complete set of syntax diagrams (encapsulated PostScript) for R10.
05/30/2010
I am not sure how to introduce Modula-2 R10... There is a document which is a concise description of this dialect of Modula-2, jointly developed in 2009 and 2010 by B. Kowarsch and R. Sutcliffe, as a modern revision of classic Modula-2 ("Revision 2010"). As one of the developers points out, "the R10 dialect is about the same size as PIM, but its expressive power rivals that of Ada and C++. This is achieved by moving all the features that other languages add to their cores into the library and provide syntax that makes library defined facilities look as if they are built-in. Low level facilities are on par with C. Variadics are type-safe like everything else".
The homepage of Objective Modula-2 has been updated recently to reflect the latest changes to the core language and grammar. Find a summary of the latest updates here.
Other news: Chris Burrows informs us about the appearence of a copy of the manual of Logitech Modula-2 1.0 at bitsavers.org.
05/17/2010
An updated version of the QDTools package by P. Guiochon is available from the download area.
The implementation of the ISO library of GNU Modula-2 is complete now (Wow!). You may also be interested in the new section Building a shared library of the GNU Modula-2 documentation.
05/04/2010
Chris Burrows scanned some articles and tables of content from copies of 'The Modula-2 News' published in the 1980's by Modus, the Modula-2 Users Association (announcement). The file is available from CFB Software.
You may also be interested in the growing list of Modula-2 projects over at Ohloh.net.
Last but not least your help is needed once again. Some people are searching for a skilled volunteer to help in getting Modula-2 support into the GeSHi distribution. If you have PHP skills please consider helping.
04/20/2010
Ohloh.net supports Modula-2, Modula-3 and Oberon for a few weeks now (thanks for the hint!). This solves the problem mentioned earlier.
Also published since april 7th are a number of recent entries to the changelog of GNU Modula-2.
03/31/2010
GNU Modula-2 0.78 has been released as implementation of the ISO Modula-2 library is nearly complete (version 0.80 should come with the complete library). The homepage was updated accordingly and you may be interested in the modified release map. Gaius Mulley also published the latest entries to the changelog of GNU Modula-2.
The just released latest version of Highlight includes a definition file for Modula-2. You may also be interested in similar projects with slightly different approaches or goals. Highlight generates HTML files from your sources with external CSS definitions. Since version 2.16 Modula-2 is recognized. Packages for a lot of platforms are available (Windows, numerous Linux distributions, FreeBSD, Solaris and OS X). Highlight also works as a plugin with some programs.
03/28/2010
Some people are searching for help in making Ohloh recognise Modula-2. There is a thread explaining what exactly has to be done.
03/22/2010
You may be interested in two projects beside of the earlier mentioned M2SyntaxColour hosted at BitBucket.org (list of Modula-2 projects). There is M2Regex, a regular expression library for Modula-2, as well as M2Collections, the "Modula-2 collections library. The library provides an API for collection ADTs, in particular: stacks, queues, double ended queues, priority queues, balanced binary search trees, patricia tries, dynamic arrays and hash tables to store arbitrary data. The hash table ADT allows data to be stored and retrieved by reference or by copy, with built-in reference counting. All other ADTs allow data to be stored and retrieved by reference only. The library follows PIM4, it has no dependencies and it is platform independent. The library is tested with GM2 using option 'fpim4'.". Both projects are work in progress and are available under a BSD style license.
03/13/2010
Bitbucket.org, a site similar to SourceForge.net, has updated its system to support Modula-2 syntax
highlighting (example). Bitbucket uses the Pygments Python Syntax Highlighter, a generic syntax highlighter for general use in all kinds of software such as forum systems, wikis or other applications that need to prettify source code. There is also a project at Bitbucket.org called M2SyntaxColour providing resources for various syntax colourisation tools/plugins to recognise Modula-2. In the list so far: GeSHi syntax highlighter (PHP), Pygments library (Python), Xcode IDE.
Other news: The list of Modula-2 compilers at Modula2.net was recently updated. The update was announced in comp.lang.modula2. You may want to scroll through the list to check it for completeness.
02/06/2010
The homepage of Objective Modula-2 was updated on february 4th.
Latest updates to GNU Modula-2 have been reported to the GNU Modula-2 mailing list.
01/30/2010
Prof. Dr. Theo Härder is really kind to share an impressive (250+ pages) script/book on data structures in Modula-2. You may download the file from his personal homepage at Technische Universität Kaiserslautern. The problem for most of you is that it is written in German... As I understand you may download the PDF for your personal use, reproduction in printed form is prohibited.
Beside of that several messages to the GNU Modula-2 mailing list document recent changes, bugfixes and improvements to the compiler (e.g. latest cvs changes 01/16/2010 and latest cvs changes 01/11/2010).
01/03/2010
A new release of Schwarzer Kaffee asks for attention and testing since december 20th (announcement).
By the way: Does anyone have more information about this compiler project? I cannot find contact information on the projects homepage but one can tell from a svn-checkout that quite a lot of work has already been done there. [Update:] I was told there is a homepage of modula2jcc which is (or was) the work of a group at Complutense University of Madrid. There I also found a link to another compiler project called jmodula2cc.
12/25/2009
Latest changes to GNU Modula-2 as well as the release of gm2 0.72 have been reported to the GNU Modula-2 mailing list. Amd64 binaries are available.
12/11/2009
There is a first release of "Schwarzer Kaffee" (german for "black coffee") which is a SDL wrapper for GNU Modula-2. The author underlines that the project is in a very early stage but some important things are already working. The release was first announced to the GNU Modula-2 mailing list.
12/04/2009
You may be interested in Niklaus Wirth's talk (YouTube) at GTAC 2009. Thanks to Jan Verhoeven's Modula-2 Pages where I found the link.
11/24/2009
A new package is available from the Sources Store for Modula-2 and Oberon-2. The file is called FreeImage3.13.zip and contains files to use the FreeImage library (which is "an Open Source library project for developers who would like to support popular graphics image formats like PNG, BMP, JPEG, TIFF and others as needed by today's multimedia applications.") with XDS Modula-2.
11/12/2009
Latest changes to GNU Modula-2 and the release of version 0.70 of the compiler have been announced to the GM2 mailing list.
10/31/2009
Gaius Mulley reports that all GNU Modula-2 regression tests pass on debian lenny stable x86_64! There was also a message documenting latest changes to the compiler in the middle of october.
There is a new mailing list for news and discussion about Objective Modula-2.
10/09/2009
A new list of Modula-2 Compilers categorised by availability is now available.
Latest changes and a proposal for the GNU Modula-2 compiler by Gaius Mulley may be discussed by using the GNU Modula-2 mailing list.
08/25/2009
As we seem to be near to the release of GNU Modula-2 0.70 the compiler reached a major milestone. Implementation of the ISO Modula-2 language (ISO/IEC 10514-1:1996 Modula-2, Base Language) is complete. The website was updated as was the documentation. Read the announcement here (including latest changes to the compiler).
08/15/2009
P2Ada has a new home at SourceForge.net (for about one year now...). P2Ada is a Pascal to Ada translator which also allows the translation of Modula-2 to Ada 95 via a special program called mod2pas.zip.
As the Modus Quarterly Newsletter (Modula-2 News for MODUS, the Modula-2 Users’ Association) was mentioned in comp.lang.modula2 recently I tried to find content from this newsletter. All I could find is an article with the title "Automatic export of identifiers from the definition module" by Arthur Sale. Does anyone have more?
Some of you may be interested in the Language Breakdown in Open Source. Modula-2 does not (yet) appear there. The only language from the Wirthian family to show up is Pascal (and if you count it in, Ada).
In a sidenote about these pages I want to inform you about lots of corrected or deleted dead links and about some smaller reorganisations of content here and there. If you find out something is not working, please tell me.
08/09/2009
I just visited the homepage of Modulipse and found out version 0.0.3 has been released in June. The announcement states that "it is now possible to work with Modula-2 source files that are outside the workspace". Thanks for adding this! Packages for Linux, Windows, Solaris and OS X are available for download.
07/30/2009
A polished presentation of the Objective Modula-2 Grammar is available from the projects homepage now. The update was announced in comp.lang.modula2.
Chris Burrows uploaded an important piece of software for the history of Modula-2: "a) a zip file containing the source code of a Macintosh version of Wirth's single-pass Modula-2 compiler which generates MC68K code b) a copy of the release notes that accompanied the original Lilith version. This single-pass compiler was a significant improvement over the original 4-5 pass M2 compiler. It consists of approx 13,000 lines of source code compared to the original 19,000."
07/21/2009
GNU Modula-2 now supports multidimensional arrays. Several messages to the GNU Modula-2 mailing list report progress on the feature.
The Modula-2 to Modula-3 translator m2tom3 is now available from this site as it is getting harder to find a working download location.
07/08/2009
Version 2.35 of the Modula-2 FAQ was released: "Henceforth only a notice about this site (and no longer the entire FAQ) is distributed on USENET News and thence to Google). The FAQ will only be available here on Modula-2.com."
As I just updated the links to the recently made available ANTLR grammar for PIM and ISO Modula-2 I also want to point out that these ressources and the Xcode 3 language specification for Modula-2 are now available from http://modula2.net.
07/05/2009
Jan Verhoeven published a modified version of a random number generator as described in Programming in Oberon by Niklaus Wirth and Martin Reiser.
Following a hint by Terry Ross in comp.lang.modula2 I found a lot of freely available articles related to Modula-2 originating from www.atarimagazines.com.
It seems we are close to a release of Aglet Modula-2, a Modula-2 compiler generating native PPC code for Amiga OS4. The compiler compiles itself since march and a beta was released in may. You may want to help in testing.
And last but not least the article Class is a Record - Wirth was right after all has been published. You are invited to discuss it in comp.lang.modula2.
07/03/2009
Objective Modula-2 will from now on be accessible at http://objective.modula2.net/.
You may also be interested in a question asked in comp.lang.modula2: "I wonder what everybody's interest in Modula-2 is. Are you simply interested because you have to maintain legacy code or are you actually doing new development in Modula-2, if so which area? system development? embedded? GUI apps? Web? Or is your interest only due to being taught M2 at university and you're out of here as soon as the course finishes?". For those who do not use a browser to access newsgroups click here.
06/22/2009
A new file for Xcode syntax colouring for PIM Modula-2 is available at the homepage of Objective Modula-2 (scroll down, it is near the bottom of the page). The announcement can be found in the archives of comp.lang.modula2.
A few weeks ago I mentioned Zonnon here. A post in comp.lang.modula2 now pointed me to a forum for the language - just in case you got interested.
05/18/2009
Benjamin Kowarsch has kindly made ANTLR grammars for both PIM3, PIM LL(1) and ISO Modula-2 available. These were made for documentation purposes but can be used to generate syntax diagrams with ANTLRworks. The original announcement of the author was posted in comp.lang.modula2.
Other news: Latest entries to the GNU Modula-2 ChangeLog (and latest regression test results) have been reported to the GNU Modula-2 mailing list.
05/17/2009
Zonnon is definitly not Modula-2 but a language closer to its ancestor than for example Oberon. A short description from Wikipedia: "Zonnon is a general purpose programming language in the Pascal, Modula-2 and Oberon family. Its conceptual model is based on objects, definitions, implementations and modules. Its computing model is concurrent, based on active objects which interact via syntax controlled dialogs. The language is being developed at ETH Zürich Institute for Computer Systems by Prof. Jürg Gutknecht. Zonnon introduces the concept of 'active objects' which are used to represent real world concurrent objects within computer programs." You may be interested in the language report and the compiler. While Zonnon can be used with Visual Studio 2005 (there are implementations for .NET and Mono/Eclipse) there is also a simple open source IDE called Zonnon Builder available.
05/02/2009
Latest changes to the source code of GNU Modula-2 have been reported to the GNU Modula-2 mailing list.
There was some noise in comp.lang.modula2 recently. Some of you may be interested in the discussed topics.
Chris Burrows informed me about a second (1-pass) Modula-2 compiler included in Emulith (link to ftp-server).
Last but not least I want to interest you in a message and thread in the XDS Modula-2 forums. We may have a chance to bring life to a Modula-2 IDE. So please express your interest.
03/09/2009
The homepage of the Kronos research group was updated recently. You may be interested in the sourcecode of the Kronos workstation which is now available under a BSD-license. There is also an emulator and a lot of amazing information on the history of the system. Wikipedia provides a good overview.
Other news: Sometimes people tell me about quite amazing things.
03/04/2009
A few months ago the description of Objective Modula-2 was deleted by Wikipedia because of the lack of an implementation. Objective Modula-2 is "a hybrid between Smalltalk and Modula-2 based on the object model and runtime of Objective-C. The design is an example how native Cocoa/GNUstep support can be added to static imperative programming languages without implementing a bridge." Benjamin Kowarsch now informs via the GNU Modula-2 mailing list that the project is alive. Some papers and code can be fetched from the projects homepage. [UPDATE:] I just recognized the Objective Modula-2 Homepage is now also part of the Modula-2 website ring which has its home at ModulAware.com.
02/22/2009
Jos Dreesen released a new version of Emulith, the register-level emulation of the Lilith hardware. Version 1.2 (release notes) introduces a native Windows port and some interesting new features. [UPDATE:] The official announcement by the developer is available. And did I mention that Emulith includes a Modula-2 compiler?
02/08/2009
Three links to messages documenting the latest changes to GNU Modula-2: 21 Jan 2009, 04 Feb 2009, 04 Feb 2009.
01/11/2009
Several messages document recent changes to the sources of GNU Modula-2: 05 Jan 2009, 07 Jan 2009 and 10 Jan 2009. Most important the implementation of type COMPLEX (COMPLEX, LONGCOMPLEX, SHORTCOMPLEX and if the architecture/gcc
runtime supports them COMPLEX32, COMPLEX64, COMPLEX96 and COMPLEX128) is nearly complete.
12/18/2008
Andreas F. Borchert announced the availability of some historic Modula-2 material in comp.lang.modula2. Available for download are "the sources of the ETH Zurich Multipass Modula-2 compiler for the Lilith and an emulator, written in C, which we used in 1983 to bootstrap to another platform. You'll find this material along with some instructions how to revive all this with the help of a simulator of the Interdata 8/32 from the Computer History Simulation Project at http://www.mathematik.uni-ulm.de/modula/history/."
Recent changes to the sources of GNU Modula-2 have been reported to the GNU Modula-2 mailing list.
12/09/2008
Jos Dreesen released Emulith. This interesting piece of software is a register-level emulation of the Lilith hardware. "You will need a reasonably fast PC running Linux and having at least 1280x1024 resultion." The author reports that the emulator also runs under OS-X and CygWin/x (download via ftp).
12/04/2008
Daniele Marangoni sent new files for Notepad++. The archive contains a Modula-2 API definition for Notepad++ v.5.0.3 to be used with the XDS Modula-2 compiler.
12/01/2008
Gaius Mulley sent two interesting mails to the GNU Modula-2 mailing list. First one informs that "Steve Giess has kindly contributed a port of xmodula to gm2. I've just wrapped it up with a standard configure, Makefile, ChangeLog etc. It appears to work with the current cvs gm2 on a variety of i386 and x86_64 GNU/Linux platforms albeit the release number is 0.1."
The other mail informs that "Michael Lambert has kindly built gm2 for the Alpha platform running Debian GNU/Linux Stable. Both this platform and x86_64 are using the LP64 memory model and both platforms are seeing no regression test failures at present."
11/29/2008
Web Family Tree is a freeware program by Peter J. Moylan that permits you to display your family tree in a web browser. It is a Modula-2 program using the common gateway interface. The source code is available. Those interested in this relatively simple way of getting a graphical interface for Modula-2 programs may be interested in the CGI related pages by Jan Verhoeven.
Other news: There is a new page describing howto create a Debian package for GNU Modula-2.
11/21/2008
Binary packages of GNU Modula-2 0.68 are available since november 8th to the public capable of using Debian repositories. Please help to test the upcoming release of the compiler.
11/04/2008
GNU Modula-2 0.63 has been released. There have been a lot of recent changes accompanied by discussions in the GNU Modula-2 mailing list. Big steps were made with the implementation of ISO features and the ISO libraries (The archives of the mailing list for October and September have more). Anyway, here is the release announcement, and an email with details on some changes and additions. Up to date documentation is also available. [Update:] Gaius Mulley published an updated changelog.
09/17/2008
There is a simple page to help you getting started with Google Code Search. Most sites and download locations offering Modula-2 sources can already be found there. But some of you still might want to add something (you may also add CVS and Subversion repositories).
Some information on the progress and the plans related to GNU Modula-2 is again available at the GNU Modula-2 mailing list.
09/06/2008
Latest changes to the source code of GNU Modula-2 have been reported to the GNU Modula-2 mailing list. [Update:] Gaius Mulley has made available a screencast showing that Python can catch GNU Modula-2 exceptions.
More and more parts of Murus are translated by Jan Verhoeven and published in the download section of the Mocka and Modula-2 mailinglist. Mr Verhoeven also announced a working version of a compiler for the PLOV language which seems to be a simplified version of Modula-2.
08/15/2008
Thanks to Jos Dreesen more Lilith goodies are availeble now. "Most important is a binary image of the Lilith Systemdisk, and a subdirectory containing all files ( more then 700..) of that systemdisk. Among these files are: Medos binaries and source code. Modula-2 compiler binaries with source code. Lilith system utilities with source code. Bootfiles and system files. Lilith microcode source and assembler. Also available are hardware docu and some screenshots."
Page Six an IRC-bot written entirely in Modula-2 has got a new home temporarily.
A little program available in a lot of different programming languages seems to need improvement.
08/08/2008
Two documents (Generics In Modula-2: ISO/IEC 10514-2 and Object Oriented Modula-2: ISO/IEC 10514-3) are now available from the Modula-2/Oberon-2 Sources Store (scroll down in the download-section). I could not open one of the files but the other one still was and is very interesting lecture. Maybe some of you are interested.
07/14/2008
More and more interesting facts (for those interested in the history of Modula-2) about Modula-GM, the Modula-2 dialect used and developed by General Motors and Delco Electronics are published at the GMnext Wiki. One example is an article about the Development of Modula-GM, another one sums up the Development of Electronics for Indy 500 cars and engines.
Recent messagess to the GNU Modula-2 mailing list document interesting changes to the GNU Modula-2 compiler. Exception handling seems to work now and some examples are there to help you getting started. This is a major step towards ISO compliance.
07/06/2008
A new project was started at SourceForge.net. It is called Modula2Plugin and still in a very early planning stage. Description from the project page: "The goal of this project is to provide an IDE for Modula-2 in the form of a plug-in for Eclipse and/or an add-in for Visual Studio (2008). It will be integrated with the XDS Modula-2 compiler."
07/01/2008
Tom Breeden published a beta version of Aglet Modula-2, a compiler generating native PPC code he developed for Amiga OS4. Beta means please help in testing.
06/29/2008
A special version of Rowley Modula-2 is now available from the languages section of Ram Meenakshisundaram's Transputer Home Page at classiccmp.org. While I knew there were versions of this compiler for OS-9/68K this seems to be a version for the Transputer HeliOS system. I didn't manage to open the archive so anyone out there who knows more?
06/15/2008
Gaius Mulley reports recent changes to GNU Modula-2 to the gm2 mailing list: "With these fixes and additions the examples in gm2/examples/swig work. Specifically it now allows users to create shared libraries given an implementation module. The examples/swig/strio will now flush the buffers during the FINALLY statement sequence. Thus users should be able to implement Python modules using GNU Modula-2, so long as the top level definition module uses base types."
05/04/2008
Some messages to the GNU Modula-2 mailing list document recent changes to the GNU Modula-2 compiler. There is also a message requesting your opinion about the implementation of shared library support. Finally basic Swig support is now available. "This allows scripting languages (perl, python and tcl) to access Modula-2 implementation modules." (Information about Swig).
04/21/2008
The sources of Medos have recently been announced and are now available. Medos was the operating system of the Lilith workstation, the famous computer designed by Niklaus Wirth.
An updated version of the QDTools package by P. Guiochon is available from the download area.
And the latest changelog of GNU Modula-2 was posted to the mailing list.
04/14/2008
Two recent messages by Gaius Mulley to the GNU Modula-2 mailing list document a lot of changes to the compiler. New data types and support for exceptions are only two examples from a long list of changes. Some explanations and clarifications can be found in another message.
03/09/2008
Files needed for Modula-2 syntax highlighting with Notepad++ are now available from the download-area. A short readme is included in the archive. Thanks a lot for providing your work!
02/26/2008
I just built GNU Modula-2 using the Cygwin Layer on a Windows Vista Laptop [UPDATE: download the build (~19MB)]. It compiled and installed out of the box (using the latest archive gcc-4.1.2+gm2-cvs-latest.tar.gz). I built a simple hello world program just to test functionality: GM2 and Vista - impressive (more information).
Some Modula-2 enthusiasts may be interested in a bunch of documents related to the Lilith personal computer. Chris Burrows found them and they are available from Bitsavers.org.
Some of you may also be interested in a syntax highlighter for Notepad++ which can be requested via email.
02/18/2008
Looking around I found a page entitled Objective Modula-2 1.00 (Reference Implementation). Another infunctional link can be found at Softpedia. Both links were added in july 2007 and are broken at the moment (old infunctional adress). "Objective Modula-2 is an extension to Modula-2 which follows the Objective-C object model and retains the bracketed Smalltalk message passing syntax introduced in Objective-C. Like Objective-C, Objective Modula-2 is a reflective, object oriented programming language with both static and dynamic typing. It is intended as a safer alternative to Objective-C for Cocoa and GNUstep software development. It retains most of Modula-2's features, most importantly data encapsulation with nested modules, explicit import and export lists and strict type checking" (description taken from Wikipedia). Does anybody have more information? Who is the developer mentioned at the listed sites?
02/11/2008
Interesting news from the GNU Modula-2 mailing list. Gaius Mulley uploaded some screen-casts to show you the complete process of building the GNU Modula-2 compiler. "If anyone is wanting to build GNU Modula-2, but is a little unsure how to go about it then this is how I build it on a Debian Etch 64bit machine."
David Moreno, developer of Modulipse, sent a message to the GNU Modula-2 mailing list describing howto build the compiler on a computer running Microsoft Windows using a Cygwin environment. Please note that some of the steps he describes are no longer necessary as they were applied to the sources of the compiler already.
Last but not least you may be interested in the latest changes to the gm2 compiler.
01/23/2008
Modulipse, the Modula-2 IDE based on the Eclipse platform, got a homepage now.
01/21/2008
GNU Modula-2 now supports constant literal constructors conforming to the ISO Modula-2 standard. Gaius Mulley reported this and a lot of other recent changes to the GNU Modula-2 mailing list. The archive of the mailing list also contains a thread called Modula-2 IDE which informs about Modulipse and the Alpha editor family. The latter provides a powerful Modula-2 mode and recently added support for GNU Modula-2.
01/13/2008
Modulipse 0.0.2 was released last friday. The changelog informs about the following changes: procedure folding now works correctly for nested procedures, there is an overlay icon to distinguish Modula-2 projects now, code templates for procedure definitions were added, the user guide has been updated and reorganized, and unnecessary classes and icons were removed.
Click here to visit the News Archive.
