To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Fair enough. But 'the late 80's and early 90's' was 20 years ago, now (I know, it's shocking to me too). That is a lot of time to grow beyond meager beginnings.
Furthermore, the Linux kernel prides itself on portability almost as much as NetBSD (which is eclipsed in actual portability by Linux). Given that there are other free C compilers out there (icc, pcc, etc), you would think that Linux would have parted would GCC dependency a long time ago. Compiler dependent code strikes me as just as poor form as architecture dependent code.
It has been stated by a few kernel devs (I think Linus, but I cant find a reference), that while it may be possible, it is extremely difficult to do low level kernel development in C without leaning on some non-standard functionality in the compiler. Meaning that it they wanted to support multiple compilers they would have to conditionalize the living hell out of the headers/build system OR make the other compilers behave the same way as GCC. The later is much easier in the long haul (and is essentially what Clang is trying to do for the most part).




Member since:
2006-07-14
What else would Linus have used in the late 80's early 90's? Naturally, they grew up together.
Edited 2010-10-27 02:35 UTC