Re: GCC is 25 years old today

From	Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com>
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: GCC is 25 years old today
Date	2012-03-29 15:03 +0200
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<12-03-065@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	<12-03-051@comp.compilers> <12-03-053@comp.compilers> <12-03-062@comp.compilers>

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Rui Maciel schrieb:

> But GCC isn't the only free compiler out there, and yet no other
> compiler, paid or free, managed to attain the same level of
> popularity.  Couldn't it be possible that GCC's success is owed to
> some determining factor other than price?

In former times it was common practice to use one compiler for
development, and another one for production. The development compiler
has to integrate nicely into the development system, with short
turn-around times, and has to provide the best diagnostics possible.
The production compiler instead has to provide the best optimization,
while diagnostics and turn-around times are quite unimportant.


> [I think it's fair to say that GCC was the first free compiler that
> generated code competitive with commercial compilers. -John]

Obviously it's more economic to maintain multiple code generators in a
common compiler framework, instead of writing and maintaining an
dedicated compiler for every target, as most isolated commercial or
hobby compiler writers did.

My experience with "highly optimizing" compilers, in detail MSC, sums
up in "the new version ejects less NOPs than the preceding one". This
may have changed nowadays, though...

DoDi

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GCC is 25 years old today Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-03-22 22:29 +0000
  Re: GCC is 25 years old today BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-24 08:44 -0700
    Re: GCC is 25 years old today "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-03-26 11:00 +0200
      Re: GCC is 25 years old today compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-03-27 09:27 +0000
        Re: GCC is 25 years old today "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-03-28 16:38 +0200
          Re: GCC is 25 years old today compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-03-29 12:30 +0000
            Re: GCC is 25 years old today "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-03-30 09:58 +0200
            Re: GCC is 25 years old today Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> - 2012-04-12 15:07 +0200
        Re: GCC is 25 years old today BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-28 13:46 -0700
    Re: GCC is 25 years old today glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-03-28 13:33 +0000
    Re: GCC is 25 years old today Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-03-28 16:47 +0100
      Re: GCC is 25 years old today Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com> - 2012-03-29 15:03 +0200
      Re: GCC is 25 years old today Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.net> - 2012-03-29 09:17 -0500
        Re: GCC is 25 years old today BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-30 14:58 -0700
      Re: GCC is 25 years old today BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-29 09:48 -0700
        Re: GCC is 25 years old today Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com> - 2012-03-30 10:58 +0200
          Re: GCC is 25 years old today BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-30 13:33 -0700
            Re: target platforms and .NET, was GCC is 25 years old today BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-31 13:08 -0700
      Re: GCC is 25 years old today anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-03-31 14:02 +0000
        Re: GCC is 25 years old today mev <mevermeulen@gmail.com> - 2012-04-01 06:20 -0700
      Re: GCC is 25 years old today jgk@panix.com (Joe keane) - 2012-04-01 01:05 +0000
  Re: GCC is 25 years old today Marco <prenom_nomus@yahoo.com> - 2012-04-01 08:24 -0700

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