Rust compiler walk-through – Introduction
1–10 of 15 posts
Re: Rust compiler walk-through – Introduction
#2Does any one know if there is a plan for a GCC Rust Frontend?
Re: Rust compiler walk-through – Introduction
#3Does any one know if there is a plan for a GCC Rust Frontend?
I doubt it. Unless the GNU team decided to add it, I don't think there's much incentive. Are there targets out there that gcc supports which aren't supported by LLVM? Probably not too many. Commercially, LLVM is much more attractive than GCC, so semiconductor companies which make CPUs/uCs/DSPs/GPUs/FPGAs/etc are probably more likely to create an LLVM backend than a gcc one.
Re: Rust compiler walk-through – Introduction
#4Does any one know if there is a plan for a GCC Rust Frontend?
There are two nascent alternative Rust compiler projects that I know of. One is https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc, which does not aim to be a GCC or LLVM front-end, and seems aimed at bootstrapping rust on platforms with only C/C++ support. The author of this alt compiler says they're able to parse and typecheck libcore (the small OS independent part of the standard library). They are working on codegen so they can start making use of the rustc compiler tests. I don't think they aim to implement the borrow checker, though, because their goal is bootstrapping rustc on other platforms, and the borrow checking can be verified using a different compiler.
There's also a frequent user of the rust irc channels who is experimenting with writing a GCC front-end for rust. I don't think any code for that is public yet, and I don't know how far along they are.
Re: Rust compiler walk-through – Introduction
#5Does any one know if there is a plan for a GCC Rust Frontend?
I doubt it. Unless the GNU team decided to add it, I don't think there's much incentive. Are there targets out there that gcc supports which aren't supported by LLVM? Probably not too many. Commercially, LLVM is much more attractive than GCC, so semiconductor companies which make CPUs/uCs/DSPs/GPUs/FPGAs/etc are probably more likely to create an LLVM backend than a gcc one.
> Are there targets out there that gcc supports which aren't supported by LLVM? Probably not too many
Plenty in the embedded space. Just compare the GCC backend list at https://gcc.gnu.org/backends.html to what LLVM supports ("only" X86, X86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC-64, ARM, Thumb, SPARC, Alpha, CellSPU, MIPS, MSP430, SystemZ, and XCore).
The embedded space is very diverse, and even if LLVM backend support is good it's still nowhere near GCC. They're pretty niche of course and LLVM does a good job of supporting the mainstream architectures (and even a bit more). Still, if you're in embedded development not being supported by GCC is limiting.
Re: Rust compiler walk-through – Introduction
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt it. Unless the GNU team decided to add it, I don't think there's much incentive. Are there targets out there that gcc supports which aren't supported by LLVM? Probably not too many. Commercially, LLVM is much more attractive than GCC, so semiconductor companies which make CPUs/uCs/DSPs/GPUs/FPGAs/etc are probably more likely to create an LLVM backend than a gcc one.
> Are there targets out there that gcc supports which aren't supported by LLVM? Probably not too many Plenty in the embedded space. Just compare the GCC backend list at https://gcc.gnu.org/backends.html to what LLVM supports ("only" X86, X86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC-64, ARM, Thumb, SPARC, Alpha, CellSPU, MIPS, MSP430, SystemZ, and XCore). The embedded space is very diverse, and even if LLVM backend support is good it's s…
I could be wrong but I'd wager that there's some support for many of those backends that's just not upstreamed to LLVM.
Re: Rust compiler walk-through – Introduction
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt it. Unless the GNU team decided to add it, I don't think there's much incentive. Are there targets out there that gcc supports which aren't supported by LLVM? Probably not too many. Commercially, LLVM is much more attractive than GCC, so semiconductor companies which make CPUs/uCs/DSPs/GPUs/FPGAs/etc are probably more likely to create an LLVM backend than a gcc one.
> Are there targets out there that gcc supports which aren't supported by LLVM? Probably not too many Plenty in the embedded space. Just compare the GCC backend list at https://gcc.gnu.org/backends.html to what LLVM supports ("only" X86, X86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC-64, ARM, Thumb, SPARC, Alpha, CellSPU, MIPS, MSP430, SystemZ, and XCore). The embedded space is very diverse, and even if LLVM backend support is good it's s…
Yeah. Trunk LLVM doesn't even have AVR support, so no Rustduino.
Re: Rust compiler walk-through – Introduction
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt it. Unless the GNU team decided to add it, I don't think there's much incentive. Are there targets out there that gcc supports which aren't supported by LLVM? Probably not too many. Commercially, LLVM is much more attractive than GCC, so semiconductor companies which make CPUs/uCs/DSPs/GPUs/FPGAs/etc are probably more likely to create an LLVM backend than a gcc one.
> Are there targets out there that gcc supports which aren't supported by LLVM? Probably not too many Plenty in the embedded space. Just compare the GCC backend list at https://gcc.gnu.org/backends.html to what LLVM supports ("only" X86, X86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC-64, ARM, Thumb, SPARC, Alpha, CellSPU, MIPS, MSP430, SystemZ, and XCore). The embedded space is very diverse, and even if LLVM backend support is good it's s…
If a compiler supports ARM and Thumb, it covers a majority of modern embedded platforms. The days of 8- and 16-bit microcontrollers are coming to an end -- 32-bit Cortex-Mx chips are very competitive on price and power consumption and much more capable.
Re: Rust compiler walk-through – Introduction
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Are there targets out there that gcc supports which aren't supported by LLVM? Probably not too many Plenty in the embedded space. Just compare the GCC backend list at https://gcc.gnu.org/backends.html to what LLVM supports ("only" X86, X86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC-64, ARM, Thumb, SPARC, Alpha, CellSPU, MIPS, MSP430, SystemZ, and XCore). The embedded space is very diverse, and even if LLVM backend support is good it's s…
I could be wrong but I'd wager that there's some support for many of those backends that's just not upstreamed to LLVM.
You can say the same thing for GCC too, it's just that both of the pools (merged into trunk and not) are much larger.
Re: Rust compiler walk-through – Introduction
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Are there targets out there that gcc supports which aren't supported by LLVM? Probably not too many Plenty in the embedded space. Just compare the GCC backend list at https://gcc.gnu.org/backends.html to what LLVM supports ("only" X86, X86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC-64, ARM, Thumb, SPARC, Alpha, CellSPU, MIPS, MSP430, SystemZ, and XCore). The embedded space is very diverse, and even if LLVM backend support is good it's s…
Yeah. Trunk LLVM doesn't even have AVR support, so no Rustduino.
A prominent member of the rust community has been publishing a series on getting rust to target their Uno: http://jakegoulding.com/blog/2016/01/02/rust-on-an-arduino-u...