From the Garage
COBOL updates, technical notes, and news from our team.
Mastodon
Weekly wrap: As noted, the Ubuntu 24 GDB-COBOL package is on the #cobolworx downloads page as are, as usual, the #gcobol RPM and DPKG packages. Jim's trip to IBM TechXchange as a visitor from another universe went well.
Mastodon
An Intro to GDB-COBOL: Source Level Debugging for COBOL Programmers: blog post by Bob himself. This package is gdb support for GCC COBOL (gcobol). Package available on our downloads page. https://cobolworx.com/post.php?s
COBOLworx
Discover GDB-COBOL, a source-level debugger designed for COBOL developers. Learn how it brings familiar GDB commands to COBOL programs, with support for variable inspection, paragraphs, PERFORM statements, conditional breakpoints, and watchpoints. Explore a practical debugging example and see how GDB-COBOL makes troubleshooting COBOL applications easier.
Substack
Or a story about 1960s Printers
Substack
Busy, busy but mostly family, friends, and care team – GCC COBOL Moves On
Mastodon
The video from my CarolinaCodes! 2026 talk (COBOL - Round 2) is up. https://carolina.codes/speakers/2026/marty-heyman #COBOLworx #cobol
Mastodon
The decision is made: The COBOL front-end for GCC will be proclaimed Feature Complete before the end of the year. Bug fixes only between then and GCC 18 Release in the Spring! Current gcobol-17 pre-release packages avail
COBOLworx
James K. Lowden presented MESA — the Middle-End Semantic Assembler — at GNU Tools Cauldron 2026, highlighting new ways to inspect GCC’s internal representation and explore future performance opportunities for GCC COBOL.
Mastodon
REMINDER: we're still offering FREE proof-of-concept support for GCC COBOL (gcobol) and GnuCOBOL (cobc)! We'll help show how easy a port (recompile for Linux) is. #cobolworx #COBOL
Mastodon
Glanced at a couple of "COBOL" alerts, one of which mentioned the "risk of replacing legacy COBOL" ... yeah, the risk of replacing anything of any complexity with an entirely new language and no real understanding of the
Mastodon
GCC COBOL (gcobol) performance improvements have cut many common operation roughly in half. Worth another look at the "tip of the spear" (downloads from cobolworx.com). We're at a point where we may be able to drop gcobo
Substack
Squeamish about COBOL to Java, Go, &c. Translators?