GCC COBOL – Developed by Symas’ COBOLworx team
- Maryanne Normann
- 17 hours ago
- 1 min read
The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) merged COBOLworx’ new COBOL front-end for release in GCC 15 (late April or early May 2025). This new primary language for GCC conforms to the latest ISO-IEC COBOL standard and delivers GCC’s portability and flexibility for COBOL users.
The merge included over one hundred and thirty thousand lines of code. This GCC COBOL release contains the core COBOL language. XML, JSON, and improved SQL support are on the COBOLworx’ GCC COBOL 16 roadmap. COBOLworx has also extended the GNU Project’s Debugger (gdb) to support COBOL source-level debugging. COBOL programmers now have what C, C++, and Fortran programmers have had for decades: a free GCC compiler with native source-level debugging in gdb. COBOLworx provides free binary packages for many platforms for both GCC COBOL and the COBOL-capable gdb at the COBOLworx.net resources page.
Many wonder, “Why write a new COBOL compiler technology?” There are still hundreds of billions of lines of COBOL in production around the world. AI and other technologies help replace those COBOL programs going forward. Progress along those lines is still slow. Many of those approaches produce machine-generated code that is hard to maintain. Directly re-compiling existing COBOL programs onto today’s platforms, including the cloud, is a cost-effective step in modernization reducing technological risk cost and time-to replatforming.
COBOLworx is ready to provide Developer, Architectural, and Operational commercial technical support for GCC COBOL. Please see the main COBOLworx website for more information.