Re: [Tinycc-devel] Re: Any hope for small c++ compiler

[Mitchell N Charity]

Gcc3's precompiled header (PCH) branch seems to be currently being
merged into the mainline.

bolsen - So one possible task is to obtain gcc3 with PCH, play with it,
and see if projects you care about (KDE?) need any tweaking of headers
to make best use of it.  And perhaps write up the effect PCH is having.

Obligatory tcc content - it will be interesting to see how gcc with
pch compares with tcc for large projects with lots of headers.

Mitchell Charity


   Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 08:26:37 +0100 (CET)
   From: Karel Gardas <address@hidden>
   To: address@hidden, <address@hidden>
   cc: address@hidden
   Subject: Re: [Tinycc-devel] Re: Any hope for small c++ compiler
   In-Reply-To: <address@hidden>
   Message-ID: <address@hidden>

   On Thu, 12 Dec 2002, Mitchell N Charity wrote:

   >    Any hope for small c++ compiler
   >
   > No.  By definition, because C++ is not a small language.
   >
   >    Is it better to go for a cfront type precompiler and run that through
   >    tcc or just implement a native tc++ compiler from scratch?
   >
   > Complexity and performance are similar.  Non-trivial C++ to C
   > conversion requires a C++ compiler, which just happens to emit C code
   > rather than object code.  Be advised, writing a C++ compiler is much
   > harder than writing a C compiler, and is a _many_ person year project.
   > Having tcc... helps you very little.
   >
   > I know of no open source C++ to C translators.  Comeau has a commercial
   > one.  I have no idea how fast it is.  It is picky about its C compiler
   > back ends, so using tcc would require effort. 
http://www.comeaucomputing.com

   I do have one Comeau and I'm using it with gcc2.95.4 backend. I've tried
   to use tcc for this, but w/o success - vide my previous email describing
   problem with struct redefinition - this code is simplified code what
   comeau generates. (now I've looked into tinycc-archive and doesn't find my
   emails there, I'll try to resend it again)

   With regarding to speed. The compiler is real ISO C++ and so I was curious
   how fast it's be whan I purchase it. In fact it's something between
   gcc2.95.4 and gcc3.2.1 while compiling our c++ project
   (http://www.mico.org) Timing for strip down build was:

   gcc2.95.4:    12m
   como4.3.0.1:  16m
   gcc3.2.1:     24m

   When I optimized sources for use with precompiled headers, then I was able
   to get some additional speed from it:

   como4.3.0.1 + PCH:  11m

   Interesting point here is that on some sources, compilation of generated C
   source takes nearly the same time as compilation of C++, so I'll really
   benefit something when tcc support this compiler well.

   Cheers,

   Karel
   --
   Karel Gardas                  address@hidden
   ObjectSecurity Ltd.           http://www.objectsecurity.com