[Coco] BASIC compiler for Rainbow IDE ?

[Roger Taylor]

If you're interested in a drop-in BASIC compiler for the Rainbow IDE, 
please raise your hand?

To have this work with the existing versions of Rainbow, the idea is 
to have any .bas files loaded in the tabs first, then a single .asm 
file loaded last would "include" the ".asm" output from the ".bas" objects.

ROM Paks and LOADMable binaries could be created from BASIC 
programs.  However, I don't think I can dupe the entire CoCo 3 
command set.  I'd start with standard BASIC and work my way up to a 
subset of ECB, and so forth.  The compiler would support a subset of 
the entire CoCo 1/2/3 BASIC command set.

The main goal is to let non-ML/assembly programmers create super fast 
ML programs without learning assembly.

A sample project could contain files like this:

components:
tab file 1) test.bas  -> assemble to -> test.asm
tab file 2) main.asm:  (include "test.asm") -> assemble to -> main.bin

Origin control (where the program will load in RAM) would be possible 
from the BASIC language with a command like "org $2000" just like in assembly.

It should also be possible to compile C programs from the Rainbow IDE 
right now if anyone knows of a good C compiler, by setting the output 
object filename to "something.asm" then having a make.asm file 
include "something.asm", and ofcourse use CCASM as the assembler for 
best results.  I'm not sure what C compilers (or other 6809 output 
compilers) output CCASM or EDTASM-compatible source code.  If anyone 
has any info on this, please let me know so I can add some support 
specs in my Rainbow and CCASM docs.