Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!psuvax1!vu-vlsi!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Choosing an Amiga C Compiler
Message-ID: <3168@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 20 Jan 88 00:22:44 GMT
References: <945@aluxp.UUCP>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 52

in article <945@aluxp.UUCP>, mjw@aluxp.UUCP (Michael Weber) says:
> Keywords: Lattice, Manx, others?
> 
>     This issue has  probably  been  discussed  before  with  religous
>     incantations, but what is the C compiler of choice for the Amiga?
> 
>     Lattice  claims  that  they  have  the   official   sanction   of
>     Commodore-Amiga  while  Manx  describes  a  superior  programming
>     environment.  

Not an official C-A endorsement (since I paid for it myself), but I've
had excellent results with Lattice, especially the new version 4.0.

>     Does anyone have any  recommendations  for  a  two-
>     floppy  A-500  with  2.5M  of  internal  memory?   No  commercial
>     development work would be done (at least not in the near future).

At home I've got the A1000, two floppies, and 1 meg total of RAM.  The
old Lattice really ached for another floppy or meg of RAM, but the new
one's much better in this respect.  Lattice 4.0 adds the ability to 
compress include files, which I understand Manx has done all along.  The
neat thing is that these compressed files from the programmer's point look 
exactly the same as the non-compressed files, and the compiler can freely
intermix them.  They basically tokenize C keywords.  This helps not only in
"does it fit on the disk", but in "how long does it take to read in all 
those stupid include files".

Other Lattice features I like are the capability to produce in-line
library calls, and the ANSI C prototyping capability (helps tremendously
on type checking of function calls for those late night hacking sessions).
DiskSalv 1.0 and 1.2 (not quite out yet) were developed completely on
the above system; 1.2 comes out to be over 48K of source code.  Lattice
also includes an object library with lots of UNIX, ANSI, and even some
MS-DOS compatible function calls.  The compiler is smart enough to optimize
some of the common calls, like "printf()" and "strlen()", based on what's
passed to them, but this is only an option.

I understand that Manx includes many of the UNIX-style utilities, like
make and vi (Yuck) which Lattice charges extra for.

>     It  would be used mostly to compile and modify the sources posted
>     to USENET.

Amiga sources seem about split between the two, though I've rarely found
it difficult to get things running under Lattice.  Even much of the UNIX
specific code compiles with little change under Lattice.

> Michael Weber					...!ihnp4!aluxp!mjw
-- 
Dave Haynie  "The B2000 Guy"     Commodore-Amiga  "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {ihnp4|uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: D-DAVE H     BIX: hazy
		"I can't relax, 'cause I'm a Boinger!"