[Oberon] Oberon-1 or Oberon-2?

[skulski at pas.rochester.edu]

> Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 08:07:36 +1030
> From: "Chris Burrows" <chris at cfbsoftware.com>

> If you are considering porting Oberon / Oberon-2
> or Component Pascal to a new platform,
> investigate which languages are currently being used
> to develop the sort of applications that you want
> to implement, and the libraries that you want
> to use on that platform. If they are predominantly
> written in C then Oberon might well be adequate.
> If they are written in C++ and extensively using
> the O-O features of C++ then Oberon-2 would likely be
> more suitable. If they are written in C# then
> you will find that Component Pascal for .NET
> is the most compatible.

Chris:

  this is a very good comment. I know where it is coming from: you are
looking from the software perspective. If I was planning to work with
Rpi, Arduino, Netduino, or one of your ARM development boards, then your
proposition would make perfect sense. My plans are different, though. I
want to focus on the FPGA, using the Oberon System 2013 as the starting
point. Here I can see that The System was deliberately chopped down. I
can see Professor's Wirth point in doing so for the purpose of updating
his book. He was documenting the state of affairs in a given point in
time, which predated V4, System-3, and all the subsequent work. This is
fine. But from my perspective it would be more practical to start from
the later point in time. Just compare the Linz V4 with the original
Oberon System and you will see how much useful software went into the V4
distribution. Ditto with System-3.

So from purely practical perspective I prefer to start from the more
mature point in the Oberon System history. In order for this to happen the
more recent version of the compiler needs to emit the RISC5 code. This is
my current question to the community. Is there any chance that OP2 is
updated to RISC5, or perhaps the Wirth compiler, whichever is more
practical. Another option would be to ditch the RICS5 and use some other
processor core which is served by one of existing OP2 back ends. I am not
sure if this is a practical option.

FYI, designing the appropriate FPGA board is a piece of cake compared with
porting the compiler. I can do the former, but not necessarily the latter.
And frankly, why should I try to perform the task which others in this
community can do much better than I can?

Regards,
Wojtek