Charge to SLD C Task Force

To:		Marty Breidenbach and Charlie Baltay
From:		Richard Dubois and Tony Johnson
Subject:	A Task Force to Define Use of C in SLD Code
Date:		4 December 1995

There has been a clamouring in SLD to allow the use of C in the production code system. Our problem is to balance the problems of support and maintainability against the desirability of introducing a more mainstream language.

We propose that a Task Force of interested individuals, ie largely those who would like to use C, be impaneled to investigate the problem. Their charge would be as follows:

evaluate the benefits derived from the use of C code in the offline system
identify the potential pitfalls of using C. These would include the potential for problems with memory leaks, corrupted pointers, etc the lack of production quality interfaces from C to Jazelle/Error System, etc the impact of mixing C and PREPMORT on portability to other platforms (including VM)
Identify areas where standards would be required for the use of C in SLD offline code, including whether to use ANSI, K&R or VAX C
what compiler switches to use
standards for headers, version numbers, include files, etc
naming conventions
general coding standards

The task force should make a recommendation as to whether the potential benefits outweigh the cost of supporting C. If the task force does recommend the adoption of C, then we would expect the task force to

draw up guidelines as to when it is appropriate to use C as an alternative to PREPMORT (eg should one mix PREPMORT and C inside code packages or should they be kept uni-lingual)
produce a document describing guidelines for the use of C in the SLD offline environment
bring the C interfaces to Jazelle and the SLD Error System up to production quality, as well as implement solutions to other problems identified in using C code We would expect the task force to complete its work before new C code would be permitted into the system.
We suggest that the Task Force be comprised of the following people: Tracy Usher (chair), Matt Langston, Owen Saxton, Edgar Whipple and Joe Perl.

Richard Dubois