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From: osmith@acorn.co.uk (Owen Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: is it possible to port GNU-GCC-Compiler to Archimedes running RISC-OS ?
Message-ID: <5309@acorn.co.uk>
Date: 21 Feb 91 12:22:43 GMT
References: <1991Feb20.085225.11667@cl.cam.ac.uk>
Sender: osmith@acorn.co.uk
Distribution: comp
Organization: Acorn Computers Ltd, Cambridge, England
Lines: 25

In article <1991Feb20.085225.11667@cl.cam.ac.uk> acn@cl.cam.ac.uk
(Arthur Norman) writes:

>Thus I do NOT believe one can
>generalise and expect gcc/ARM to produce significantly better code than
>ncc over a wide range of styles and quantities of code.

Well maybe things aren't as hopeful as I'd thought. But on the other hand
it is always helpful to have two completely different compilers for your
machine to help in the classic "is it a bug in the compiler or in my
program?" quandries. gcc for the ARM might never approach the speed, code
size and reliability of Norcroft on the ARM, but gcc does have one other
distinctive feature. It is free. And in my humble opinion, a free C compiler
for the Archimedes would be a good thing. Hopefully it would encourage more
people to try C out. I suspect a lot of people use BASIC and Assembler
simply because it is free with the machine and generally adequate. Given
an alternative without spalshing out lots of dosh might get them interested.
They may then find they like C, but the gcc port is too buggy/the code is
too slow/big or whatever, and save up and buy Norcroft.

Cheers Arthur!

Owen.

The views expressed are my own and are not necessarily those of Acorn.