Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux?

From	rugxulo@gmail.com
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux?
Date	2016-09-26 15:29 -0700
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<16-09-033@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	<16-09-001@comp.compilers>

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Hi,

On Sunday, September 4, 2016 at 2:02:33 PM UTC-5, Aharon Robbins wrote:
>
> Can I get recommendations for other (free) C compilers besides
> GCC and CLANG?
>
> In short, I'm looking for a faster compiler that actually works.

I'm not sure what miracle advice you expected to get from here.

The first thing you should do is check your build system. Maybe there
isn't much leeway there, but you should definitely something better
(simpler?) than Autotools. Try using Dash instead of Bash. Also, at
the very least, you should make your C modules as small as possible
and only use expensive optimizations on crucial files (instead of
blindly using "-O2" for everything).

If modern GCC is a bottleneck, use an older version from an old
distro (in a VM perhaps). If that isn't good advice, then try
to do rebuilds atop RAM disk (md or whatever *nix calls it).

What distro/GCC are you using anyways? Surely you've heard of
"-Og". (If you have a semi-recent Intel machine, try Clear Linux.)

Have you ever tried ccache or distcc? I haven't, but I assume that
something like that would help. I'm sure this has been attempted
before.

Honestly, I did a very naive build of Gawk myself (under old Lucid
Puppy Linux, admittedly not hosted in RAM but on hard disk). It
didn't seem that slow, but I was using "make -j4". So the obvious
question is how many cores does your cpu have? Are you using an
old laptop? Seriously, I hate advice like this, but you may honestly
get more gains from getting a newer machine with more cores. Heck,
some server machines these days have 20+ (although I admit that most
home versions don't have nearly that many).

Can't you use GNU's build server or something? Maybe I'm wrong, I
don't know the details, but I would assume they have something you
can ssh into for fast builds. Or maybe that's only for release
testing and not development?

I dunno, this kind of problem is very complex and naive at the same
time.

Thread

Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? arnold@skeeve.com (Aharon Robbins) - 2016-09-02 03:01 +0000
  Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? jacobnavia <jacob@jacob.remcomp.fr> - 2016-09-05 00:20 +0200
    Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? alexfrunews@gmail.com - 2016-09-05 17:26 -0700
      Re: diagnosing C errors, was Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2016-09-09 12:31 +0100
        Re: diagnosing C errors, was Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? Kaz Kylheku <221-501-9011@kylheku.com> - 2016-09-09 16:06 +0000
        Re: diagnosing C errors, was Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2016-09-10 00:38 +0200
  Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? Nemo <nemo@invalid.invalid> - 2016-09-04 18:32 -0400
  Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? Kaz Kylheku <221-501-9011@kylheku.com> - 2016-09-04 23:48 +0000
  Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2016-09-05 13:19 +0100
    Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? Kaz Kylheku <221-501-9011@kylheku.com> - 2016-09-06 02:15 +0000
      Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2016-09-06 21:35 +0100
        Re: dead code or otherwise, was Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2016-09-08 11:58 -0400
          Re: dead code or otherwise, was Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? Kaz Kylheku <221-501-9011@kylheku.com> - 2016-09-08 22:54 +0000
            Re: dead code or otherwise, was Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2016-09-09 00:51 -0400
              Re: dead code or otherwise, was Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? Kaz Kylheku <221-501-9011@kylheku.com> - 2016-09-09 06:05 +0000
                Re: dead code or otherwise, was Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2016-09-09 14:02 -0400
                Re: dead code or otherwise, was Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? Kaz Kylheku <221-501-9011@kylheku.com> - 2016-09-09 19:57 +0000
      Re: duplicate cases, was Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> - 2016-09-07 17:01 +0100
  Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> - 2016-09-05 20:06 +0200
  Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? alexfrunews@gmail.com - 2016-09-05 17:22 -0700
    Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? Kaz Kylheku <221-501-9011@kylheku.com> - 2016-09-06 02:18 +0000
  Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? rockbrentwood@gmail.com - 2016-09-07 17:00 -0700
  Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? arnold@skeeve.com (Aharon Robbins) - 2016-09-12 18:42 +0000
    Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2016-09-12 22:37 +0100
      Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? arnold@skeeve.com (Aharon Robbins) - 2016-09-13 17:35 +0000
        Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? arnold@skeeve.com (Aharon Robbins) - 2016-09-14 18:14 +0000
  Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? rugxulo@gmail.com - 2016-09-26 15:29 -0700
    Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? arnold@skeeve.com (Aharon Robbins) - 2016-09-27 05:40 +0000
      Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? rugxulo@gmail.com - 2016-09-27 16:36 -0700
        Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2016-09-28 18:16 +0100
          Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2016-09-29 14:03 +0100
            Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2016-09-29 22:57 -0400
            Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2016-09-30 05:03 +0200
              Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2016-09-30 12:00 +0100
                Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2016-09-30 20:15 +0200
                Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2016-10-01 22:17 +0100
            Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2016-09-30 12:28 +0100
              Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2016-10-17 22:49 +0100
        Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2016-09-28 21:24 -0400
      Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2016-09-28 01:01 -0400
        Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? arnold@skeeve.com (Aharon Robbins) - 2016-09-29 02:55 +0000
      Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? arnold@skeeve.com - 2016-09-29 05:30 -0600
        Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux? arnold@skeeve.com (Aharon Robbins) - 2016-09-30 10:13 +0000

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