Google Groups: Ansicht Diskussionsthemen "GPL and NDAs"

In article <1995Jun7.101538.26580@wavehh.hanse.de> cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (Martin Cracauer) writes:

>>I doubt it, what possible FSF goal can be met by such a separation, it

>>would seem to promote exactly that which FSF tries hard to prevent, the

>>creation of proprietary technologies which make use of free software.

>

>I don't think so. IMHO, the only reason why the separation isn't done

>is that noone spent the time on it.



Robert is quite correct.  Richard Stallman has been adamantly opposed

to any attempt to split front ends into separate programs for

precisely the reason Robert gives.



>The GNU-Objective-C folks, for example, would be very happy to have

>their frontend mixed with the C++ frontent to allow Objctive-C++

>programs.



True, but what does this have to do with the separation issue?  It

seems instead that such mixture would be even *less* separated.



>From what I heared, the FSF would be happy to make the gcc backend an

>easier-to-use tool for language implementors.



Certainly true, but again this has nothing to do with separation of

the kind Robert was talking about.



>The backend has to be modified anyway to allow better optimization for the

>deeper pipelines of modern CPUs.



There are lots of optimizations that could be added to the backend to

produce better code; GCC does reasonably well now with pipeline

delays, so the above doesn't appear to be one of the more important.



However, again, what does this have to do with the separation issue?



>If the current way to implement m3 causes major overhead, maybe the

>time required for every m3-inside-gcc-backend release would be better

>invested in turning gcc into something that causes less overhead.



The experiences of the GNAT project show how valuable GCC has been to

language implementation since they were able to concentrate solely on

language issues and leave code generation, optimization, and

portability issues to GCC.



However, everything can be improved.  I welcome your suggestions for

making it easier to write front ends to GCC.