Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!microsoft!markro
From: markro@microsoft.UUCP (Mark Roberts)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: When will Microsoft give us a *REAL WORLD* C Compiler
Summary: Comments from Microsoft (long)
Message-ID: <1466@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 16 May 88 17:31:38 GMT
Reply-To: markro@microsof (or uunet!microsof!markro)
Organization: Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA
Lines: 83

> In article <21992@bu-cs.BU.EDU>, madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost) writes:
> >
> > Well, Microsoft C is on version 5.1.  This means a minimum of 6
> > revisions of their compiler have gone out (1.0 - 5.0 major and now 5.1
> > to fix a plethora of bugs in 5.0).  You'd think that after that many
> > major revisions, most of the bugs would be gone, especially those
> > which users have complained about repeatedly.
> 
> I hate to burst *your* bubble, but I have heard rumors (from some of
> Microsoft's 5.1 beta sites) that 5.1 is still about as broken as 5.0.
> This is unfortunate for developers who would *like* to "keep up with the
> Jones'" as far as new industry-accepted compilers go, but how can you
> support something you can't even trust to use in-house yourself?
> 
> Sad... c'est la vie.
> 
> Shelli Meyers
> FTP Software, Inc.

------------------------
We would like to address some of the questions raised by these and similar
recent articles appearing on the net.

Mr. Frost states that C 5.1 is at least the 6th release of MS C.  In fact
C 5.1 is the 4th release of this compiler.  Versions 1.x and 2.x were
licensed versions of Lattice C (circa 1982).  Microsoft developed its own
compiler because of the need for higher quality code generation and the
need to support the 286 instruction set for the development of XENIX.
MS C 3.0 was the first retail version of this compiler.  C 5.1 was not
released as a "bug fix" version for C 5.0, but rather as an OS/2 development
compiler.  It is the first retail version which will run in protected mode
and supports the generation of protected mode executables.  C 5.1 does fix
a number of problems from C 5.0; however, Mr. Frost's statement implies that
these were problems of long standing, when in fact, the most serious problems
(with in-line intrinsics and loop optimizations) could not have existed
in previous versions of the compiler as these feature were added for C 5.0.

Ms. Meyers claim about Microsoft not using its own products in-house is
completely off base; her remarks can only be characterized as ill-informed
at best.  Some examples of Microsoft products built exclusively with C 5.0
and/or C 5.1 (some with the addition of some MASM code) include:

        MS C, QuickC and FORTRAN compilers
        QuickBasic 4.0 and Bascom compilers
        CodeView Debugger
        Utilities (Linker, Librarian, M editor, etc.)
        XENIX
        OS/2 (CMD.EXE and utilities)
        LAN Manager
        Presentation Manager
        Windows
        Windows Desktop Applications
        CD-ROM
        Applications (Project, XENIX Word, XENIX Multiplan)

This is not an all-inclusive list but it should give you an idea of the
committment Microsoft has to using C as its development language.  (The
Applications group does have their own C compiler, but this was motivated
by the need for P-code generation to save space and to add 68K support, not
because of any problems with the retail version.)  These products represent
hundreds of thousands of lines of C code running under C 5.x and we find
the allegations of instability hard to understand and support in this light.
This is not to deny that there have been some bugs, even some serious ones,
in our compiler.  All compilers have some, even those which are not being
continually upgraded in terms of new capabilities and code generation
quality.  When you try, as we do, to provide new, sophisticated, state of
the art optimization and code generation capabilities in each version, you
will occasionally get some, possibly ugly, problems, no matter how long and
how thoroughly you test.  But for each person who runs up against one of
these problems, there are thousands who have had little or no trouble.
They simply do not get on the net to tell everyone.

Finally we would like to say that we are committed to producing high quality,
high performance products and to fixing all problems reported to us in a
timely fashion.  Thanks for your continued support and interest - it really
helps us develop better products.


        Dave Weil
        Project Mgr. 
        Microsoft C Compiler

        Mark Roberts
        Mgr Compiler Technology Group