OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/24631/PCC_Compiler_Version_1_0_Released Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 21 May 2013 15:19:16 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Comment by Brynet http://www.osnews.com/thread?469956 http://www.osnews.com/thread?469956 I noticed it was in the queue on April 1st, guess they thought it was a joke. Tue, 12 Apr 2011 23:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Brynet) Comments 3 decades to reach 1.0 version http://www.osnews.com/thread?469962 http://www.osnews.com/thread?469962 impressive

J/K Wed, 13 Apr 2011 01:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tylerdurden) Comments RE: 3 decades to reach 1.0 version http://www.osnews.com/thread?469968 http://www.osnews.com/thread?469968 This comment reminds me of how different the Chrome browser feels going from Beta to version 10.

J/K Wed, 13 Apr 2011 02:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jondice) Comments RE: 3 decades to reach 1.0 version http://www.osnews.com/thread?469972 http://www.osnews.com/thread?469972 The version numbers simply weren't bumped, that doesn't say it isn't a good compiler.. it was hacked on for many years by many people, not made to impress the masses. Wed, 13 Apr 2011 05:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Brynet) Comments RE: Comment by Brynet http://www.osnews.com/thread?469986 http://www.osnews.com/thread?469986 I wasn't sure at first either ... but after checking it out it turns out it was.

Looks like a nice compiler. Wed, 13 Apr 2011 08:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (lucas_maximus) Comments C++ http://www.osnews.com/thread?470000 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470000 C++ just needs a pre-processor program? Right?

Would they use one already written, or are they developing that too? Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Earl Colby pottinger) Comments About the 1.0 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470020 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470020 The version number is version 1.0 of the modern revival. The original versions were more tied to the version of Unix that they shipped with than anything else.

Anyway, I don't really see the point of this. Yes it's small and portable and runs quickly, but it can't really compare to the output quality of GCC or Clang/LLVM. The idea of a compiler that runs superfast but makes slower binaries seems a bit odd. Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (madcrow) Comments RE: About the 1.0 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470023 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470023 I think the point is the license. Its not GPL. Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (broken_symlink) Comments RE: About the 1.0 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470024 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470024 Not really, if you understand the motivations.

The whole point is that when building releases for testing on older architectures such as SPARC (not SPARC64), the devs can compile the tree quicker ... thus they can bug fix, test improvements etc quicker.

Yes my Core 2 can compile the whole thing in about 20 minutes ... but it is for the older slower machines which are supported. Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (lucas_maximus) Comments RE: C++ http://www.osnews.com/thread?470025 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470025 that's something that always intrigued me..
there are many C++ compilers, but all just compile down to intermediate code, not C. Given the difficulty of making a C++ compiler, i'm surprised that there isn't a "generic" C++ -> C frontend that can be used with the plenty of C compilers available. Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (reduz) Comments RE[2]: About the 1.0 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470030 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470030
I think the point is the license. Its not GPL.

Clang/LLVM is not released under the GPL. I think it is released under the University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License.
see http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#license for more information on Clang/LLVM licensing. Oh the other hand what's wrong with the GCC using the GPL unless you want to make a commercial compiler? Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (metalf8801) Comments RE[3]: About the 1.0 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470031 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470031 GPLv3 is the issue. None of the BSDs can use GPLv3 sources in their own source tree.

Thus, for example, FreeBSD is stuck at GCC 4.2.1 and the accompanying versions of the binutils stack. Which is why there's a big push on to get CLang up-to-snuff, and get the source tree compilable and self-hosting on CLang. (Note: this is only applies to the compiler toolchain shipped as part of FreeBSD; users are free to install any version of GCC from the ports tree and use that for their own software projects.) Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (phoenix) Comments RE[4]: About the 1.0 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470041 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470041 Why can't *BSD use GPL V3 licensed programs? Wed, 13 Apr 2011 21:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bill Shooter of Bul) Comments RE[5]: About the 1.0 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470043 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470043 It's not compatible, philosophically and legally.. someone building a commercial product using BSD would be hindered by the additional restrictions added to version 3 of the license.

There are many comparisons and discussions explaining the problems, google it.Edited 2011-04-13 21:27 UTC Wed, 13 Apr 2011 21:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Brynet) Comments RE[4]: About the 1.0 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470045 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470045 sorry my question was already answeredEdited 2011-04-13 21:47 UTC Wed, 13 Apr 2011 21:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (metalf8801) Comments RE: C++ http://www.osnews.com/thread?470060 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470060 "Just a preprocessor" doesn't really mean anything.

A preprocessor is, to quote wikipedia, "a program that processes its input data to produce output that is used as input to another program". You still have to do all the hard work of parsing the code and generating the appropriate IR. At this point you'll have written a compiler frontent, so you might as well stick LLVM at the backend and emit machine code (instead of generating C and then compiling that with PCC). C++ especially is notoriously difficult to parse, so it doesn't really make sense to write a C++ to C compiler. Wed, 13 Apr 2011 23:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Stratoukos) Comments RE[2]: C++ http://www.osnews.com/thread?470071 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470071 C++ was originally implemented via translation to C using a compiler called Cfront. See Wikipedia for more information: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Cfront . That article references a proprietary compiler project that I had not heard of before called Comeau C/C++ which apparently does still use the strategy of compiling C++ by going through C.

I think the problem is that it is useful for the compiler to know about C++'s features later on in the compiler pipeline. Converting them all to C probably makes the compiler harder to write and loses optimization opportunities. Thu, 14 Apr 2011 01:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AnyoneEB) Comments RE[6]: About the 1.0 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470111 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470111 Ok, I've never really heard a convincing argument on this topic. There is the letter from the free BSD foundation a while ago

http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/press/2007Aug-newsletter.shtml

Which reads like absolute FUD to me. I've never heard of any case of a product being denied FCC licensing because the end user could change the software. Nor any product suffer "increased support costs" due to people modifying the webserver on a device.

I once preferred FreeBSD to Linux, but I see know with GPV3 that they are more interested in providing freedom to Companies, than individuals. There is no reason why my FreeBSD Desktop should suffer (worse performance from PCC compiled binaries) because some nitwit wants to throw it in a box and sell it as a media server.

Well I guess there is debian BSD, that will still use GNU userland, and probably prefer GCC licensed by GPL 3. Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bill Shooter of Bul) Comments RE[7]: About the 1.0 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470129 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470129
Which reads like absolute FUD to me.


Kettle, meet pot. :roll-eyes:

I once preferred FreeBSD to Linux, but I see know with GPV3 that they are more interested in providing freedom to Companies, than individuals. There is no reason why my FreeBSD Desktop should suffer (worse performance from PCC compiled binaries) because some nitwit wants to throw it in a box and sell it as a media server.


And where do you see any of the above happening? Where do you see PCC even being considered for inclusion into the FreeBSD source tree?

Well I guess there is debian BSD, that will still use GNU userland, and probably prefer GCC licensed by GPL 3.


Wow. That's all I can say, just, wow. :shakes head: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (phoenix) Comments RE: C++ http://www.osnews.com/thread?470134 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470134 PCC is somewhat tied to OpenBSD. OpenBSD is actually working on eliminating all C++ from their basic tree. For example, they just got rid of groff for that very reason and replaced it with their own man-page preprocessor. Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mikemikemike) Comments RE[7]: About the 1.0 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470138 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470138 Firstly PCC compiles quickly and produces slower binaries so that the OpenBSD tree can be built faster on very slow machines (SPARC, m68k, VAX) ... and thus testing can commence more quickly.

Also more modern variants of GCC do not support the older archs that OpenBSD (and other BSDs may support). So pcc is a solution to this problem.

The choice to develop pcc was a pragmatic consideration not an idealistic one.

Also I do not see what the problem is about releasing code that benefits everyone including companies. It is the original developers choice as to what license they wish to release their code under. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is wrong. Thu, 14 Apr 2011 19:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (lucas_maximus) Comments RE[2]: C++ http://www.osnews.com/thread?470144 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470144 Not exactly.

AFAIK Anders Magnusson (main developer of PCC) started revisiting old code of PCC after experience with porting NetBSD to PDP-10 (KLH10 emulator to be specific). Most problems with porting were related to GCC, not NetBSD itself.

Most work on mdocml (which replaced groff in OpenBSD) were done by Kristaps Dzonsons - NetBSD developer. NetBSD had even Google of Summer Code program related to mdocml.

Nerveless people from OpenBSD had great impact on both projects. Many BSD projects those days are maintained by more than one community. Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (blinkkin) Comments RE[5]: About the 1.0 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470151 http://www.osnews.com/thread?470151 Policy. Just like how GPL can't use proprietary stuff.
Ever wondered why Linux isn't compiled with the Intel compiler? Thu, 14 Apr 2011 22:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Soulbender) Comments