Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!labrea!rutgers!bpa!manta!brant
From: brant@manta.pha.pa.us (Brant Cheikes)
Newsgroups: unix-pc.general
Subject: Gcc 1.30 loses in battle with C-TeX 2.21
Message-ID: <443@manta.pha.pa.us>
Date: 7 Nov 88 16:27:54 GMT
Reply-To: brant@manta.pha.pa.us (Brant Cheikes)
Distribution: unix-pc
Organization: Soul of the Gnu Machine, Philadelphia
Lines: 22

I tried putting gcc 1.30 "through its paces" by using it to build the
latest version of C-TeX (2.21); the results aren't good.  The gcc I'm
using successfully compiled itself, but when I used it to compile
tangle in the texware area, it produced an executable that ran but
didn't work right.  Leaving the -O flag off gcc's command line
produced a proper tangle, but one that was 17% larger than that
produced by the stock compiler WITH optimization.  Similar results
were had for building triptex: gcc's optimized version didn't pass the
trip test, the non-optimized version passed fine, but was 14% larger
than the one produced with the stock ccom and optim (UNIX 3.51).  There
was a speed degradation corresponding to the increase in size.

So right now I don't see the benefit of gcc.  As long as its optimizer
is broken, the stock cc wins.  I should point out that the
dysfunctional optimized gcc-produced executable for triptex was about
15% SMALLER than the stock-cc optimized version.  And it did the wrong
thing much faster than the stock-cc version did the right thing.
-- 
Brant Cheikes
University of Pennsylvania
Department of Computer and Information Science
Internet: brant@manta.pha.pa.us, UUCP: bpa!manta!brant