All,
 
In article <[log in to unmask]>
           [log in to unmask] "Johann Aschenbrenner" writes:
 
>
> We are in the last stage of porting a highcapable graphical Apollo
> (WS30)-application to open-unix systems (HP-UX, SGI IRIX5.3, SCO, Linux,
> aso.).
>
> Our application consists of 250.000 lines of Apollo-Domain pascal code,
> whith extensive use of GMR 2D, GPR and Domain/Dialogue to build the user
> interface. The port target is Ansi-C (Posix)/X11R5.
> The ported application works very stabile and provides the same 'look and
> feel'(1:1) as the original on  the Apollo-system. The only difference is
> working speed 10 times faster.
>
> A team of five unix-professionals spent about 12 months on the job.
> The pascal code was still under heavy maintainance during this time.
> So we had to automate the porting process, to make it repeatable.
>
> The porting was done step by step. First was build an emulation library
> of the domain system-calls. This library were tested in combination with
> the original pascal code. The transition from pascal to C were
> done almost automatically by tools and scripts.
 
I suspect that most of that man power went into rewriting the user interface
code and 'maintenance'.
 
We ported a 50,000 line pascal program (a C compiler) to C in about
4 man days.  We did have plenty of warning and were able to migrate the
Pascal code away from constructs that had no straight forward C mapping,
like nested functions.  Also, being compiler writers we had a very good
idea which constructs were standards conforming, ie likely to be easily
mapped.
 
The conversion tool we used was QuickStep P2C from Lauer & Wallwitz,
Wiesbaden, Germany.  It cost a few hundred dollars in 1989 and the
library source could be purchased for a little more.
 
The converted C did have a very strong Pascal 'feel' to it.  Over time
this has been 'remoulded'.
 
Those of you interested in converting from C might like to look at
http:nw.demon.co.uk/knosof/ctoa.html
 
derek