Rust front-end merged in GCC trunk

#1

Post by pratk » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 9:59 AM UTC

Rust front-end merged in GCC trunk
gcc.gnu.org

Re: Rust front-end merged in GCC trunk

#2

Post by rwmj » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 10:21 AM UTC

What are the practical implications of this? Could cargo call GCC? Or would it be like gcj and allow compiled rust libraries & binaries to be distributed? (at least in theory, gcj didn't work out well)

Re: Rust front-end merged in GCC trunk

#3

Post by Conan_Kudo » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 10:39 AM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #2

What are the practical implications of this? Could cargo call GCC? Or would it be like gcj and allow compiled rust libraries & binaries to be distributed? (at least in theory, gcj didn't work out well)

Cargo could call gcc-rs instead of rustc.

Re: Rust front-end merged in GCC trunk

#4

Post by rapsey » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 11:12 AM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #2

What are the practical implications of this? Could cargo call GCC? Or would it be like gcj and allow compiled rust libraries & binaries to be distributed? (at least in theory, gcj didn't work out well)

More architectures supported at least. Now Rust can really be used anywhere C is used

Re: Rust front-end merged in GCC trunk

#5

Post by pabs3 » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 11:22 AM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #2

What are the practical implications of this? Could cargo call GCC? Or would it be like gcj and allow compiled rust libraries & binaries to be distributed? (at least in theory, gcj didn't work out well)

There is also a project for rustc to use GCC instead of LLVM for codegen.

https://github.com/rust-lang/rustc_codegen_gcc

Re: Rust front-end merged in GCC trunk

#6

Post by scaredginger » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 11:22 AM UTC

rapsey wrote: post #4

rwmj wrote: post #2

What are the practical implications of this? Could cargo call GCC? Or would it be like gcj and allow compiled rust libraries & binaries to be distributed? (at least in theory, gcj didn't work out well)

More architectures supported at least. Now Rust can really be used anywhere C is used

Out of curiosity, what can GCC's backend generate that LLVM can't?

Re: Rust front-end merged in GCC trunk

#7

Post by pabs3 » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 11:23 AM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #2

What are the practical implications of this? Could cargo call GCC? Or would it be like gcj and allow compiled rust libraries & binaries to be distributed? (at least in theory, gcj didn't work out well)

What happened to gcj?

Re: Rust front-end merged in GCC trunk

#8

Post by hardware2win » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 11:27 AM UTC

I hope there aint gonna be ecosystem fragmentation

When there are a fews compilers with significant market share then developers are those who lose, lose that handy dev. experience of solid and consistent ecosystem

I hope it will be used only where necessary

Re: Rust front-end merged in GCC trunk

#9

Post by wofo » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 11:35 AM UTC

hardware2win wrote: post #8

I hope there aint gonna be ecosystem fragmentation When there are a fews compilers with significant market share then developers are those who lose, lose that handy dev. experience of solid and consistent ecosystem I hope it will be used only where necessary

I think this is more of an attempt of making Rust compilable on platforms not supported by LLVM, not an attempt to replace the existing compiler. The GCC frontend, for instance, does not implement the borrow checker, so you should only use it to compile Rust code you know is correct according to the official Rust compiler.

Re: Rust front-end merged in GCC trunk

#10

Post by elsjaako » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 11:50 AM UTC

scaredginger wrote: post #6

rapsey wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More architectures supported at least. Now Rust can really be used anywhere C is used

Out of curiosity, what can GCC's backend generate that LLVM can't?

AVR (for example, old Arduino boards) and xtensa (like esp32 developer boards) are the only ones I know of. Most of the desktop OS platforms are supported by both.