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Replacing GCC

kamper

kamper

Diamond Member
There's been some somewhat idle discussion in the bsd world about replacing gcc for a while. I think it's partly the license, partly technical reasons, but the reason it hasn't been done is because it's hard.

Recently though, there's been some action, particularly involving pcc. It's in OpenBSD base (-current only, won't be in 4.2) and pkgsrc. I think people have recently compiled most of both OpenBSD and NetBSD userlands with it.

Here's some OpenBSD news: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action...15195203&mode=expanded

and NetBSD: http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/bx.../nb_20070917_0016.html


Some people (who aren't developers of either project afaict) have been mortally offended by it, going so far as to recommend that kernels be rewritten in java 😛. Personally, I think it's a good thing (replacing gcc, not a java kernel). A little bit of competition in the open source compiler world is probably productive, as long as it promotes standards rather than creating fractures. Even if pcc were to replace gcc in base of any os, gcc would have to stay around for ports. At any rate, this has all been i386 so far, so it'll probably be quite a while before any major changes are made. I'm putting my money on OpenBSD being first.
 
Overall I agree that a little competition in the OSS compiler arena would be good but there's absolutely zero documentation for pcc and I can't find a mention of a license on the site or in the tarball, which is a little worrisome.
 
FreeBSD apparently imported it into their ports tree.

pcc is (4 clause) BSDish licensed. I see it in the cc.c file at least. Apparently its originally held by Caldera. 😛

I'd still like to see more work done with the MIT licensed kencc, just wish I had the skills to do it. 😉
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
Yea, I saw the Caldera mentions too and that scared me a bit. =)
Click to expand...

The only thing that scares me is that icky 4th clause. 😛 Calder's dead and sco is dying...
 
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
I'd still like to see more work done with the MIT licensed kencc, just wish I had the skills to do it. 😉
Click to expand...
Well, now's the time to start. If it gets picked up and turned into a full system compiler it'll only get more complicated. If I ever get a strong enough inclination to fool around with C again, I'll haul out my compilers textbook and dive into one of the smaller ones.

I'd read some comments about kencc but it seemed somewhat up in the air as to what licenses it was really available under. I got the impression it was only available with the lucent license. If it is MIT, why haven't more people tried it out?
 
Originally posted by: kamper
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
I'd still like to see more work done with the MIT licensed kencc, just wish I had the skills to do it. 😉
Click to expand...
Well, now's the time to start. If it gets picked up and turned into a full system compiler it'll only get more complicated. If I ever get a strong enough inclination to fool around with C again, I'll haul out my compilers textbook and dive into one of the smaller ones.

I'd read some comments about kencc but it seemed somewhat up in the air as to what licenses it was really available under. I got the impression it was only available with the lucent license. If it is MIT, why haven't more people tried it out?
Click to expand...

It's a pain in the rear to get ahold of the code...
 
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