Hi all,

I was working with my IRIX 4 machine recently and noticed a mysterious file - /usr/lib/ecfe.  It turns out that this is the Edison Design Group C (not C++) Front End, included almost certainly by accident with the last release of the Developer Toolkit for IRIX 4.  No other piece of the compiler toolchain references the EDG product in any way and there is no documentation for it whatsoever.

The research that I did seems to indicate that this is a source to source translator, akin to the contemporary Kuck & Associates product - is that correct?  I also found a reference to EDG's tool being used in the Apogee C compiler.  I have a copy of Apogee C for SunOS and it does appear that "cfe" is the same EDG product.  Unfortunately there is no documentation specific to the C front end, and I don't have a license for Apogee C so I can't run the compiler to see how it's calling cfe.  Just running a C file "blah.c" through the IRIX front end with no switches results in a transformed file "blah.int.c".  Unfortunately running anything even moderately complex through the front end results in code that either doesn't compile or doesn't run, so I feel that I must be missing some flags or basic options.

Does anyone have any information about SGI's use of this software, or any documentation/information in general about the EDG product?  My usual sources came up empty.

-Henry