What is TinyCOBOL?

TinyCOBOL is a effort to develop a free COBOL compiler with basis in COBOL 85 standard.

TinyCOBOL generates a GNU assembly code at output that works in IA32 plataforms and it can be executed in the following operating systems:

Linux
FreeBSD
BeOS
Windows, using Cygwin and MinGW

What COBOL standards are supported?

TinyCOBOL supports the following standards:

ISO IEC 1989:1995: Programming Languages - COBOL
ISO IEC 1989/AMD1:1992: Programming Languages - COBOL Amendment 1: Intrinsic Function Module.

ANSI X3.23-1985: Programming languages - COBOL
ANSI X3.23a-1989: Programming languages - COBOL Amendment 1: Intrinsic Function Module.
X/Open XPG3: COBOL Programming languages extensions.

What type of license TinyCOBOL is distributed?

The TinyCOBOL compiler is licensed under the GPL license and the TinyCOBOL run-time library is licensed under the LGPL license. You can have more information about this licenses in GNU website

What license can the applications built with TinyCOBOL be distributed under?

That's your choice! The TinyCOBOL run-time library(1) is distributed under the LGPL, and does not impose any license restrictions on either the original COBOL source nor the binaries produced.

1) Note: The above terms and conditions apply only if the run-time library is compiled using Berkeley's DB version 1.85x or 1.86.

Where can I ask for support in my doubts?

You can ask for help in our mailing lists that does have a good traffic and good people to answer.

Where can I post some bug that I found?

You have three ways:

Posting the bugs in our bugtracker.
Using the script tool, a log-generator program that generate a log file after it be started and to be finished you should use exit. You can use this way:
```
$ script
$ type the commands
$ exit
```
The log file will be generated in a file called typescript. Attach this file in a e-mail and post in TinyCOBOL mailing lists.
If you use the Minimal System(MSYS), use the MSYS clipboard area. To cut the text from MSYS console, select the text with the mouse and click in the left-mouse button. To paste the text, open a text editor(like notepad) and paste the text pressing CTRL+V. Save the file, attach it in a e-mail and post in TinyCOBOL mailing lists.

Instead of the use of the script tool, you can use the strace tool, a log-generator program that generate a log file from the internal functions called by the program:

$ script
$ strace program-name (program-name is a binary executable file)
$ exit

How can I contribute?

If you are a COBOL programmer, you could be useful to help to add some things that isn't exist in TinyCOBOL grammar.
If you have experience with compilation tools or interpreters like lex, specifically yacc, your knowledge and experience in understand the COBOL intrinsics syntax would be invaluable.
If you are a C programmer, we have a plenty of things to be done.
If you are a techinical writer, we need of technical writers to our documentation.
Finally(but not at least), we need of beta testers.

How could I submit a patch file?

If you found any bug in TinyCOBOL and fix it by yourself, download the latest version using CVS and check if the bug that you found still exists.

If so, use the diff utility between the latest version of related file and your fixed file to generate the diff file as follows:

diff file.c file-fixed.c > file.diff

Attach it in a e-mail, post in TinyCOBOL mailing lists and wait for a answer for the TinyCOBOL developers.

Don't send the entire fixed file to mailing lists because it could confuse the developers and it's not a good way to create a patch file.

How could I apply a patch file?

Just type:

patch -p0 <patchfile file-to-be-patched

Frequently Asked Questions