IBM Corp has changed its mind over Unix versions of its VisualAge C++ development tool set, and says it will after all be converting its full development environment for AIX, Solaris, and maybe HP-UX if the demand is there. IBM already has the compilers across all of its own systems as well as Solaris and Windows NT. Now the complete environment, including the Visual Builder interface and Open Class Libraries, will be converted, timed to come out when VisualAge for C++ Version 4 comes out in an early beta version by the year-end on IBM proprietary systems and Microsoft Corp Windows95 and Windows NT. We had planned to build a target-only version for Unix, said Allan Friedman, manager of object-oriented strategy at IBM’s Toronto Labs, but the huge growth in Java and the Internet has changed things. IBM is already converting the largest stack class libraries over to HP-UX, and may follow up with the complete tool set. It has already begun showing demonstrations of its VisualAge for Java, due out during the second half of this year, and that is also likely to become available under AIX and Solaris.
