The code review and enhancements to the Gnu Project Debugger (gdb) for COBOL debugging (GCC COBOL - gcobol) are largely done. The hard part of preparing all of the changes for a proposed “patch” for gdb upstream continues. Watch the COBOLworx download site for packages, in the interim, of “gdb-cobol”!

This is one of the bigger recent accomplishments of the gcobol team. Many of the others are odds and ends needed to keep a couple of our collaborators moving towards getting their programs compiled with gcobol and running, at least in test. The recent substack snark about IBM 1403 printers is an example.

The support for “EXEC SQL” (COBOL SQL support) using the native API for PostgreSQL is moving along but that won’t be part of the function freeze at the end of the year. Any compiler changes required SHOULD be done by 2027-01-01 but the preprocessor likely won’t be completed by then.

Just an update from COBOLworx land.