From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Dec 5 15:11: 0 2000 From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Dec 5 15:10:57 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from netau1.alcanet.com.au (ntp.alcanet.com.au [203.62.196.27]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 96C7E37B400 for ; Tue, 5 Dec 2000 15:10:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from mfg1.cim.alcatel.com.au (mfg1.cim.alcatel.com.au [139.188.23.1]) by netau1.alcanet.com.au (8.9.3 (PHNE_18979)/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA15992; Wed, 6 Dec 2000 10:10:14 +1100 (EDT) Received: from gsmx07.alcatel.com.au by cim.alcatel.com.au (PMDF V5.2-32 #37645) with ESMTP id <01JXDP9XQSZ4EAFIGB@cim.alcatel.com.au>; Wed, 6 Dec 2000 10:10:09 +1100 Received: (from jeremyp@localhost) by gsmx07.alcatel.com.au (8.11.0/8.11.0) id eB5NA9c14262; Wed, 06 Dec 2000 10:10:09 +1100 (EST envelope-from jeremyp) Content-return: prohibited Date: Wed, 06 Dec 2000 10:10:09 +1100 From: Peter Jeremy Subject: Re: lint In-reply-to: <200012051217.HAA56851@lakes.dignus.com>; from rivers@dignus.com on Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 07:17:12AM -0500 To: Thomas David Rivers Cc: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Mail-followup-to: Thomas David Rivers , stable@FreeBSD.ORG Message-id: <20001206101008.C95349@gsmx07.alcatel.com.au> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i References: <20001205111025.I22946@moose.bri.hp.com> <200012051217.HAA56851@lakes.dignus.com> Sender: jeremyp@gsmx07.alcatel.com.au Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On 2000-Dec-05 07:17:12 -0500, Thomas David Rivers wrote: > Having been "in the compiler business" for almost 17 years; let me > see if I can be an "expert witness" here. And I can think of 3 other people who inhabit these lists who have a reasonable degree of compiler expertise. > Fortunately, C is a language that one person can get their hands > around - it takes a little over a man year before the first compiler > (with bugs) sees the light of day. Though I believe C9X is trying to rectify this 'problem', by re-designing the language to remove the option of a `simple' compiler :-(. > Then, you'll want to add an optimizer. This is critical for RISC architectures, and becoming more important with heavily-pipelined, super-scalar CISC. The IA64 architecture in particular places quite heavy demands on the compiler. > Oh - and don't forget - the FreeBSD kernel makes heavy use > of gcc extensions; we'll need those. Apart from the use of the 'Extended asm', AFAIK all of the extensions purely relate to __attribute__ hints and could be readily disabled in . > As to original AT&T compilers; I recently discovered that Plan9 is > now "open source" (I haven't looked at the license myself) so it may > provide compile sources I would expect it to be self-contained (ie include the compiler), but I haven't checked. I do recall from an early talk on it by Rob Pike that a fair amount of effort went into speeding up the C compiler (though I don't know about the code quality). (I'm also a bit uncertain of the degree of open-ness of the license). > My ultimate point is; we should be thrilled to have gcc - it's > a remarkable achievement considering that it is open-sourced (and > many of the contributors are not paid.) I totally agree. Peter To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message