Conference turris::decc_bugs

1274.0. "All I wanted was to find out the compiler version (/VERSION gripe)" by WTFN::SCALES (Despair is appropriate and inevitable.) Mon Mar 17 1997 17:28

I wanted to find out what version of the compiler I was running, so I typed in 
CC/VERSION<return>...

It turns out that the CC command demands an input file.  Fine, I assume, that's
just DCL following the CLD, I'm willing to put up with that.  It's not really
under the compiler control, right? or can you make the presence of the /VERSION
qualifier skip the requirement for an input file, in the CLD?

Anyway, so I type in a bogus file name, but then I get an error printed out
*instead* of the version!!  Wait...all I wanted was the version of the
compiler...why is it actually trying to OPEN the file?  OK, nevermind that, I'll
just feed it "NL:".  That seems to satisfy it, and I get my version string.

But wait!  Now there's a brand new ".OBJ" file in my current directory!  It's
empty, but that makes sense given the input.  Nevertheless, yick.  All I wanted
was the compiler version!

OK, so lets try this again.  This time I feed a little test program to
CC/VERSION -- I mean, after all, maybe /VERSION doesn't affect anything other
than to print out the compiler version string.  Sure enough, there's the object
file.  But wait, the Linker says it's empty, too!  (Oh, and, it turns out, /LIST
produces an empty file, as well!)


So, to summarize, the /VERSION command appears to require an openable input file
and produces empty output files.  This strikes me as being a bug:  if it's not
going to produce output, it should neither create the files nor require that the
input file be accessible.


			Thanks,

				Webb

A future version of DEC C will support
    
    cc/version
    
    cc/version file.c               ! no output files will be produced
    
    cc /qualifier ... /version      ! you'll get some DCL noise though
    
but not
    
    cc /version /qualifier ...
    
The work was already done as a result of c_plus_plus not 3348.
    
                                    August G. Reinig

	For now, you can "bulletproof" it for batch or interactive use:

$ CC/VERSION/NOOBJECT/NOLIST _NLA0:

:A future version of DEC C will support

   And a pre-processor symbol containing the version string?
   (And -- going for broke -- maybe another one for the status of
   the /DEBUG flag?)