81–90 of 169 posts
Anyone actually use Intel compilers
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ongoing efforts to add a Rust frontend to GCC prove otherwise. No Rust in GCC? No play.
Unlike C/C++, there is one canonical rustc where the language is developed and GCC will likely always play catch up.
Rust is only following down the footsteps of D and Go.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wasn't LLVM reinventing the wheel at the time? They could just collaborate to GCC.
They wanted to, but RMS wasn't interested at that time: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00... I have also been told by more than one person that does professional compiler development that GCC's codebase is very difficult to work with. At least some commentary I've read suggests that this was a deliberate choice on the part of the GNU project.
Add another. (Now-former professional compiler developer.)
> At least some commentary I've read suggests that this was a deliberate choice on the part of the GNU project.
This is the ‘RMS loophole’ in the GPL. In theory you can do what you want with the source; in practice you need help from the insiders.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Don't want to end up with every C/C++ compiler being a clang skin in the same way as (almost) every browser is a chrome skin. Why not ? There is one open C++ spec, that's really hard to implement, so we have a dozen C++ compilers that are impossible to support properly because they each have their own set of different ten thousand bugs. The value of supporting all of this is really small in practice, and the cost f…
We did have one major C++ compiler on Windows (MSVC) and one major C++ compiler elsewhere (GCC) and they both stagnated in many areas before Clang came along and forced them to advance to stay competitive.
Up to 2005 I was using UNIX own C++ compilers, meaning aCC, xlC, SunPRO.
Then there were Microchip, ARM, TI,...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also: if icc is going to go with LLVM as a backend, then what is the point of using icc at all? Why not just use clang? From the blog post: " Not all our optimization techniques get upstreamed—sometimes because they are too new, sometimes because they are very specific for Intel architecture. This is to be expected and is consistent with other compilers that have adopted LLVM. " I don't see any good technical reaso…
What that sentence actually means is "we don't want to help our competition (AMD, NVIDIA) but we don't want to re-implement the wheel". The API and fundamental part of LLVM is its IR, LLVM-IR, which is where most optimizations happen. From this point-of-view, LLVM is a "platform", and an extremely brittle one: every release has breaking changes to the IR, the IR is constantly evolved to support new hardware and new o…
It's still a little strange to me the whole free compiler thing. I used to pay hundreds of dollars each for, first Turbo C/C++, then Borland C/C++ and Zortech C/C++. I think IBM's C/C++ for OS/2 was the first time the compiler came free with an OS that I had on my computer and I was literally shocked that it included—for free—the GUI for building GUI applications. I guess being old is what makes me perfectly fine wit…
I'm not sure I love this. I mean, LLVM is awesome and everthing, but software monocultures are pretty bad. It's not like the situation is dire yet (given that there are also GCC and MSVC), but you can imagine a situation in a couple of years when Microsoft goes "yeah, we're also gonna go with LLVM now" and also GCC starting to fade away. It's a bit concerning. Also: if icc is going to go with LLVM as a backend, then…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was ions ago, and if not for anything else, Linux kernel will keep GCC around. Azure Sphere OS is also GCC only, despite Microsoft's new foundled love for clang.
There is significant investment in building Linux with Clang so I wouldn't count on Linux keeping GCC relevant forever. Doubly so with the inevitable rustc requirement.
I would rather see both of these compilers to stay competitive to push themselves higher.
I'm not sure I love this. I mean, LLVM is awesome and everthing, but software monocultures are pretty bad. It's not like the situation is dire yet (given that there are also GCC and MSVC), but you can imagine a situation in a couple of years when Microsoft goes "yeah, we're also gonna go with LLVM now" and also GCC starting to fade away. It's a bit concerning. Also: if icc is going to go with LLVM as a backend, then…
> Also: if icc is going to go with LLVM as a backend, then what is the point of using icc at all? Why not just use clang? From the blog post: " Not all our optimization techniques get upstreamed—sometimes because they are too new, sometimes because they are very specific for Intel architecture. This is to be expected and is consistent with other compilers that have adopted LLVM. " I don't see any good technical reaso…
This is exactly why GCC is GPL and why RMS didn't want to make it more modular. Taken to the extreme we could end up with proprietary hardware that requires a proprietary (closed) compiler even though it's built on open source. Going back to "trusting trust" things might not be so good, and we know Intel is happy to build untrustworthy chips.