RE: [Tinycc-devel] windows port

[Peter \"Firefly\" Lund]

On Sun, 16 Mar 2003, Erik Poupaert wrote:

> with lexer & parser done with SableCc. The incredible speed of tinycc would
> be a boon for such project. The availability of libtinycc favours this kind
> of use too.

Some of the speed comes from the hand-built lexer/parser.

> A first issue is that the backend should be able to generate code for at
> least windows (PE) and linux (ELF).

Yes, that would be nice.

> Another issue would be that the backend should have a "lenient" mode. The C

Let's wait and see, ok?

I think it is easier for you to handle in the front-end than it is for tcc
in the "backend".

Write the code (for your own compiler) and see how much you really end up
needing it.

Having the backend perform extra checks on the intermediate code (in this
case, C) is a Good Thing.  You will catch bugs in your frontend because of
that.

(compilers for functional languages take this to extremes and benefit from
it -- they usually have several different intermediate languages, each
with a completely well-defined semantics and a type-system.  Each phase
consists of simple transformations from one intermediate language to the
next.  The language the compiler is written in will catch most
type-errors, the rest are caught by type-checking of each intermeditate
language -- the result is a high-quality compiler faster)

-Peter

"Of course, I'm not unbiased, but in my humble opinion, I've
 gotten close to something that I can be really proud of."
 -- Knuth on The Art of Computer Programming.