Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 00:25:10 -0500 (EST) From: "Brandon D. Valentine" <bandix@looksharp.net> To: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: obrien@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: lint Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0012052359030.47072-100000@turtle.looksharp.net> In-Reply-To: <20001205155121.A66239@dragon.nuxi.com>
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On Tue, 5 Dec 2000, David O'Brien wrote: >But there isn't code generators for Alpha and PowerPC (that I know of), >and it isn't ISO-C99. Sounds like a good project... hint, hint. LCC currently supports Alpha, Sparc, r3k MIPS, and x86. Hehe, a good project indeed, for a fine cadre of code-slaves to spend a decade pursuing. >> It would be nice to see a competitive, BSD licensed alternative spring >> up to keep new ideas flowing. > >TenDRA fits that and IMHO is a more industrial straight compiler than >LCC. BUT as we have seen, no one has picked up TenDRA and moved forward >with it. Adding ISO-C99 support would be one thing needed. Retargeting >to Alpha, PowerPC, and IA-64 another. I had completely forgotten about the TenDRA release. That's a much more logical choice. Looking briefly it supports PowerPC, PA-RISC, MIPS, Intel, Alpha, Sparc and 68k. It would only need an IA-64 backend. Looks like an acceptibly BSD-ish license as well. It would be great to see some rough feasibility testing of compiling a FreeBSD world and kernel under it. The C claims to be C complaint, excepting Amendment 1(ISO C++). It looks like the C++ is pretty far along though (1997 draft). It also looks like there is an Ada front end in existence, which uses the same ANDF intermediate code. This would be a cool project for somebody with copious free time to spare. This has the potential to become a legitimate alternative to GCC. <tangent> My sick brain just hatched another devious idea. Perhaps you've at least heard of the "Internet C++"[0] idea that flashed across slashdot several months ago? It's essentially a Java and C# alternative that generates platform-independent bytecode from standard C/C++ sources and relies on an interpreter similiar to a Java VM. It claims to be much faster than Java and porting is supposed to be v.quick. They've got stuff as complex as doom up and running in it. It would score some mega CompSci theorist points to take a microkernel based BSD, write a minimal set of Mach servers in compiled C, then port the icpp interpreter to your microkernel BSD and compile an entire BSD userland to that bytecode. Bam, instant BSD port with little effort. Get that interpreter up on Darwin and you can run your whole userland that way if you so choose. The current project seems to have amazing results for what appears to be a rather rag-tag band of hackers. With some real BSD project like attention that technology could really blossom. </tangent> [0] - http://www.xmission.com/~icvm/index.html -- Brandon D. Valentine <bandix@looksharp.net> "Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example." -- Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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