Re: [Tinycc-devel] TCC and "smart" linking

[Jared Maddox]

> Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2012 16:19:43 +0300
> From: "Oleg N. Cher" <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: [Tinycc-devel] TCC and "smart" linking
> Message-ID: <address@hidden>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1251; format=flowed
>
> Dear TCC developers,
>
> I very like TCC. The Internet had an opinion of TCC as about producing very
> compact code. To this view continues to be, very important to add to TCC the
> functionality of smart linking, as in Turbo Pascal:
>
> "Turbo Pascal first marks all symbol table blocks </marking-used-blocks> for
> variables, typed constants, procedures and code blocks as unused, then it
> iterates through
> all modules and marks used blocks </marking-used-blocks> starting from the
> main program, after that it calculates code offsets
> </calculating-offsets-of-code-blocks>, variable offsets
> </calculating-offsets-of-variables>, resolves references
> </resolving-references>, and finally, it writes code to either overlay file
> or to the executable file </creating-executable-file>."
>
> **http://turbopascal.org/linking-modules-and-creating-exe-file**
>

Actually, TCC is about compiling code quickly. It is most appropriate
for compiling other compilers, quickly testing code, and compiling
code as part of a JIT engine. There's nothing wrong with an 'extended'
TCC, but any such thing should be kept mostly or entirely separate
from TCC itself.