From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 20377 invoked by alias); 8 Mar 2008 22:25:26 -0000 Received: (qmail 20340 invoked by uid 22791); 8 Mar 2008 22:25:25 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from hosted02.westnet.com.au (HELO hosted02.westnet.com.au) (203.10.1.213) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:25:06 +0000 Received: from hosted02.westnet.com.au (hosted02.westnet.com.au [127.0.0.1]) by hosted02.westnet.com.au (Postfix) with SMTP id 79C1749E3D; Sun, 9 Mar 2008 07:25:02 +0900 (WST) Received: from [192.168.1.103] (dsl-124-150-103-65.vic.westnet.com.au [124.150.103.65]) by hosted02.westnet.com.au (Postfix) with ESMTP id 69EC649E89; Sun, 9 Mar 2008 07:25:00 +0900 (WST) Subject: Re: Patch: delete treelang From: Tim Josling Reply-To: tejgcc@westnet.com.au To: Tom Tromey Cc: gcc-patches In-Reply-To: References: <730c9fb80803060852m4fa2d410q127e09bbbe5927de@mail.gmail.com> <1204845594.15316.36.camel@tim-gcc> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:25:00 -0000 Message-Id: <1205015100.6173.61.camel@tim-gcc> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.10.1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-PMX-Branch: TNG-Outgoing X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact gcc-patches-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-patches-owner@gcc.gnu.org X-SW-Source: 2008-03/txt/msg00556.txt.bz2 On Sat, 2008-03-08 at 09:58 -0700, Tom Tromey wrote: > >>>>> "Tim" == Tim Josling writes: > Tim> I suspect that people who have worked on GCC full time for a number of > Tim> years, and who have commit authority, can tend to forget the many > Tim> obstacles that are in front of someone starting work on GCC, > Tim> particularly on a front end. > > I've also been through this. And yes, it is very hard... GCC's > internals have improved greatly in the past years, but there is still > a long way to go. I'm not sure this is true, in terms of complexity, compilation speed, quality of code produced, and the general experience for a front end developer. I have been putting together a more detailed analysis of these issues but now is not the time. > I wonder whether you've considered writing your front end as a > library. The Lisp compilers do not realistically support running as a library so this is not an option for me. Similar problems exist for hooking into GCC from any high level language such as Ruby or Python. Using GCC in a just in time compiler is also very difficult (see the paper from the GCC summit 2007 on this topic). The GCC top end insists on being in charge and so does the interpreter run-time. Partly this is a historical legacy in that RMS did not want GCC exported as a library. > Tom Tim Josling