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Date:      Sat, 04 Jan 2003 19:45:28 -0700
From:      Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
To:        Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@attbi.com>
Cc:        Mike Jeays <mj001@rogers.com>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: On GCC
Message-ID:  <4.3.2.7.2.20030104193746.0285b9c0@localhost>
In-Reply-To: <3E1757DA.B6D0922C@mindspring.com>
References:  <3E120659.3D60EB30@mindspring.com> <200212312041.gBVKfr183480@hokkshideh2.jetcafe.org> <3E120659.3D60EB30@mindspring.com> <4.3.2.7.2.20030104112015.026a5530@localhost> <4.3.2.7.2.20030104131212.03837e10@localhost> <rcptrcppvl.trc@localhost.localdomain>

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At 02:53 PM 1/4/2003, Terry Lambert wrote:

>Look, Brett:
>
>If you want to actually *do* something to defend your agenda,
>rather than complaining, you should select one of the BSD's,
>and then work on the BSD and the TenDRA compiler, until the
>TenDRA compiler can compile it.

Why TenDRA in particular? TenDRA was a research tool designed
to help researchers STUDY compiler design; its most important
feature is a robust intermediate representation of code which
is passed from front end to back end. That intermediate
representation is powerful, but generating it and then generating
code from it is slow and a bit awkward.

The other problem, from my standpoint, is that it's C. I try
to avoid C whenever possible; about the only time I hack on
it is when a client insists and/or if I'm working on one of
the BSD kernels. If I'm in userland, I pick a different language.

>NetBSD probably has the best seperation of code to make this
>possible; OpenBSD has the most sympathetic ear, with regard to
>license arguments, and FreeBSD is the best bet, if you want to
>ensure a populist adoption.

I think that NetBSD would be sympathetic, too, since to be the
portability champ means being portable among compilers, not just
among OSes. Debugging by porting (which NetBSD strongly believes 
in) is a useful technique, but if you're using the same compiler
on all platforms you're bound to miss bugs that the compiler
hides.

>For my money, if it were my axe that I was grinding, I would
>probably pursue OpenBSD: it'd be more work than NetBSD, but a
>lot less work than FreeBSD, and you are most likely to find
>fanatics with strong opinions in the OpenBSD camp, NetBSD camp,
>and FreeBSD camp (in order of decreasing fanatacism).

The OpenBSD camp (or at least Theo) hasn't been receptive when
I've suggested "un-GNUing" their toolchain in the past.

>Let me know when you pick a platform, and start work, and have
>some dedicated net-connected resources, and at least one other
>person besides yourself working on it, and I'll be willing to
>help you turn it into a going project.

Very tempting. We'll see. I'll be meeting with some key NetBSD
developers during the next few weeks....

--Brett


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