[LLVMdev] "Name that compiler"

[Paolo Invernizzi]

Mithril

The fictional metal from JRR Tolkien The Lord of the Rings.

Gandalf says:

"Mithril! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like copper, and  
polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light  
and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of  
common silver, but the beauty of mithril did not tarnish or grow dim."

Paolo Invernizzi


On Apr 12, 2007, at 6:44 AM, Chris Lattner wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
>
> LLVM is a growing project, and many of us are very fond of it.  :)   
> LLVM
> is continuing to grow, both in maturity in specific areas and in  
> scope of
> areas that it is applicable to.
>
> When we first started the project, we focused on the design of the
> intermediate representation.  It is a strong design goal that the  
> IR be a
> self-contained virtual instruction set, which fully describes the  
> program.
> Because of this, we named the compiler LLVM, which reflects well on  
> the
> design of the IR.
>
> However, the scope of the LLVM project is outgrowing this name.  Today
> LLVM does many "non-VMy" tasks, such as serving as a great static
> compiler.  It also has components that overlap with traditional low- 
> level
> tool chain components like assemblers and linkers.  Further, LLVM's  
> scope
> is about to grow significantly with new front-end technologies  
> (e.g. HLVM,
> new SoC work on a python front-end, etc).  For all of these reasons, I
> think that "LLVM" is an increasingly poor name for the project as a  
> whole,
> and it causes a large amount of confusion, particularly with people  
> who
> do not know much about it yet.
>
> For what it is worth, this is not a new thought.  I have been kicking
> around the idea of renaming the project for several years now, but  
> have
> been stymied by not being able to come up with a better name!  The  
> problem
> is hard: how do you concisely describe a modern, modular, component  
> based
> compiler and tool-chain system, which can be used for many different
> things, hopefully many of which we haven't even thought of yet?   
> How do
> you pick a name that both memberable, relatively unique  
> (searchable), has
> an open domain name, etc?  How do you come up with a name that is  
> amenable
> to making a logo?  So far, I haven't! :)
>
> Note that the name need not capture every aspect of the project.  Just
> having a distinguished name with no specific connotation is  
> probably good
> enough.  20 years ago, "google" and "yahoo" had very different  
> meanings,
> and "mozilla" or "firefox" were pretty meaningless.  Today, there  
> is very
> strong awareness of what they are.
>
>
> As such, I'd like to open up a forum for naming ideas.  I think we  
> need to
> continue to use the name 'LLVM' to refer to the IR (i.e. that which is
> described in http://llvm.org/docs/LangRef.html), and we should plan to
> attach LLVM as a suffix to the project name for several years to  
> come: For
> example: "Use the Foo/LLVM Compiler System, it runs infinite loops  
> faster
> than the competition!".
>
> To make this more fun, "success" is extremely subjective, and I  
> have no
> idea how we will declare a victor (we can figure it out as we go,  
> right?
> :).  I propose that people add ideas to the wiki that Vikram and  
> Reid are
> getting set up, and we kick some potential names around at the  
> developer
> mtg in May.  That gives us 5 or 6 weeks to come up with a name and/or
> Logo.  The wiki isn't up yet, so consider this to be a head start :).
>
> If we find a good name, we can honor the one who came up with it  
> with a
> small amount of booty.  For example, we're prepared to award a  
> compiler
> textbook of your choice (MSRP < $100) to the winner, optionally  
> signed by
> people at the dev meeting if you so desire and if they agree.
> Alternatively, we could do a $100 gift card to Amazon or some other  
> place.
>
> What say you?  Are you up for the challenge?
>
> -Chris
>
> p.s., no I don't think "Foo Compiler System" is a good choice. ;-)
>
> -- 
> http://nondot.org/sabre/
> http://llvm.org/
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