Enterprise COBOL 6.4+ - Add sub-options to CONDCOMP(SKIPSRC) option to be more agressive in removing of lines concerned by conditional compilation

Hi,

The CONDCOMP(SKIPSRC) compilation option allows to remove lines in compilation listing of code excluded by conditional compilation.

Despite this, there may still be many lines related to conditional compilation present in the compilation listing (>>xxx directives) and which are not necessarily of interest to the developer.

These lines can be annoying when reading the compilation listing, and for what concerns us during debugging (which uses the compilation listing).

Indeed, we must consider two populations (at least in our context of implementing conditional compilation):
- the population of people responsible for managing a development framework, essentially in the form of copybooks implementing conditional compilation,
- the population of people who use this development framework and who do not need to go into the details of how it works (and should consider it as services).

We would like sub-options to be added to the CONDCOMP(SKIPSRC) compilation option:
1) a sub-option to exclude lines for compilation directives >>xxxx, with 3 values: keep lines from directives (default), exclude lines corresponding to conditional compilation conditions directives (>>IF, >> ELSE, >>END-IF, >>EVALUATE, >>WHEN, >>END-EVALUATE), exclude all lines of conditional compilation directives (including >>DEFINE).
2) a sub-option allowing to target the parts of code affected by the previous option, with 2 values: only to copybooks (default), to the entire compilation group (copybooks and main program).

Perhaps a combination of these two sub-options should be considered.

This operation should apply to standard compilations but also when using the MDECK(NOCOMPILE) option.

This should also apply to dwarf information stored in the loadmodule .


Attached, example of a program that uses a development framework in the form of copybooks using conditional compilation. The different files show the orginal program and different filtering of lines linked to conditional compilation as expected.

Thanks.