[LLVMdev] [Oink-devel] Status of Elsa->LLVM

[Daniel Wilkerson]

> I've build gcc many times over the years for different target processors
> and was never able to get my head around it internally. It is incredibly
> complex. I also didn't like the fact that I had to have N copies of gcc
> to support N processors.

Scott McPeak is rather familiar with the internals of gcc and edg and
says elsa is far simpler.

> I became interested in Elsa (via google) because I liked its extensible
> nature. I can drop in new syntax rules easily. It was also fairly easy
> to understand.

We worked very hard to make it that way just so people like you can do
what you are doing :-).

> It was easy to lower the Elsa AST to LLVM by using Elsa's extension
> capability.

I'll be pretty interested to see how you did that.

> Does Elsa provide an advantage over g++? For me, understanding it is a
> big plus. ;-) In addition, Elsa has a Berkeley-like license which I prefer.

Read it more carefully: the license is not just BSD-like, it *is* BSD!

> I'll let you know if Elsa is a good choice after I get a little further
> along adding the C++ support.
>
> Since I only have a few weeks invested in this project, I won't feel too
> bad if Elsa turns out to be a dead end.

Would you mind explaining what a dead-end would look like?

> I'd like to get the Elsa stuff behind me because I'm itching to do an
> LLVM code generator for the Altera Nios2. ;-) I started by copying the
> MIPS sources and am studying them to get a feel for what's required.

In other words you want a C++ compiler for the Nois2?

Daniel