[LLVMdev] LLVM / C--

[Guillaume FORTAINE]

>C--'s weakness is it's incompleteness (missing many major features), 
>instability/bugginess, poor performance (both time to compile and the 
>generated code), lack of high-level optimizations, lack of ABI 
>compatibility with the native tools, lack of C++ frontend support, and the 
>small size of its community.

To quote Tony Hoare :

"premature optimization is the root of all evil."

http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i24_fallacy.html

"That would then force us to choose a
versatile target architecture (such as PPC) and minimize
architecture-dependent optimizations."

http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~pengzhao/open64-devel/msg00205.html

Will we be able to retarget easily LLVM ?

Has it a sense to retarget a compiler ?

Nowadays, this is the holy grail, if not we will not be able to get rid of 
legacy architectures ...

For example, here is cutting-edge stuff in the embedded design :

http://www.sandbridgetech.com/sandbridge_solutions.htm

http://www.arc.com/configurablecores/arc700/750.html

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=MXC300-30

But when you ask where is the compiler, there is nobody to answer to your 
question ... :)

The goal of C--  is to have a multiple language/architecture framework.

Personally, I believe that if we don't follow this philosophy, we will fall 
into the GCC game and have a painful retargetable compiler ...

I believe that in the compiler design issues, the main concern will be : What 
is our philosophy ?

"In order" or "out of order" :The programmers do/ do not learn to optimise 
their algorithms... Who does what ? :)

The secular war ... x86 vs PPC.

Note : For me it's PPC ... :)

And why doesn't LLVM use lcc instead of gcc ?

Best Regards,

			WIll