Crossover: Towards Compiler-enabled COBOL-C Interoperability
summary
Crossover compiles BabyCobol and C modules into one executable using LLVM and an explicit foreign-function interface, exposing a C runtime bstd library that marshals COBOL PICTURE types to C primitives and structs. The system is bidirectional, tested with boundary-value suites, and the demo shows calling C from BabyCobol and vice versa works. Performance measurements show conversions are cheap for by-value/struct but expensive for by-reference-as-primitive. Source and DOI are on GitHub/10.1145/3624007.3624055.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:56Legacy COBOL relevance
- 4:45Baby COBOL subset
- 6:11COBOL-C interoperability demo
- 9:45Bridging COBOL and C data types
- 12:35Correctness vs performance trade-offs
- 14:42Foreign function interface design
- 15:26Future interoperability directions
- 15:52Q&A
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