Re: Tiny GCC: Pure, Unadulterated, Object Code

[Michael Witten <mfwitten@MIT.EDU>]

On 29 Jan 2008, at 1:54 AM, Brian Dessent wrote:

> Whether
> you have them as separate binaries or all in one, it *still* *doesn't*
> *matter*.  The details of the target cannot just be abstracted away  
> into
> something that you can ignore, they are vital to the context in which
> the code executes.  They matter at every point of the process, from  
> the
> highest level on down to the very lowest level.

My main point was not the naming scheme or the distribution of binaries.

As you stated before, often these radically different meta-binaries are
are targeting the same interpreter, namely the hardware. Consequently,
the evaluations and optimizations throughout the compilation process
should be the same. The only difference is in how they are packaged,
namely which meta-binary is used.

That's what seems natural to me.

Then again, I must admit that I cannot take you full on in battle, for
I have a limited understanding of the subject; I'll take your word that
there are some real reasons why GCC has been developed the way it has,
but I'll point to things like LLVM, JITs, Java, and .Net that seem to
follow the conceptual basis I propose.