Subject: Re: Compiling NetBSD with another compiler.
To: Alistair Crooks <agc@pkgsrc.org>
From: Anders Magnusson <ragge@ludd.ltu.se>
List: tech-kern
Date: 09/15/2007 12:08:42
Alistair Crooks wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 14, 2007 at 04:36:30PM +0200, Anders Magnusson wrote:
>   
>> Hm, I realized that there were more people interested in this compiler, 
>> so I'll send
>> a mail about it on these lists also.  I have setup a mailing list about 
>> pcc, join it by:
>> _echo "subscribe pcc-list" | Mail majordomo@ludd.ltu.se_
>> or similar.  There is also an embryo to a web page about pcc; 
>> http://www.ludd.ltu.se/~ragge/pcc/
>> which contains some basic information.
>>
>> I have (as some people may know) been hacking on pcc for fun for some 
>> years.
>> After having that project on the shelf for a year or so, I decided to 
>> make the compiler
>> at least compile the NetBSD source tree again.
>>
>> It is not yet bug-free, but it can compile the i386 userspace.  The big 
>> benefit of it
>> (apart from that it's BSD licensed, for license geeks :-) is that it is 
>> fast, 5-10 times
>> faster than gcc, while still producing reasonable code.  The only 
>> optimization added
>> so far is a multiple-register-class graph-coloring register allocator, 
>> which may be
>> one of the best register allocators today.  Conversion to SSA format is 
>> also implemented,
>> but not yet the phi function.  Not too difficult though, after that 
>> strength reduction is
>> high on the list.
>>     
>
> Thanks, ragge.
>
> I've added this to pkgsrc/lang/pcc - all further contributions welcome.
>
> FYI, there was great interest expressed in pcc by all of the BSD projects
> here at EuroBSDcon 2007, since a BSD-licensed compiler is high on the
> list of priorities for us.
>
> Thanks once again for doing this - it's really, really neat.
Whee, cool!  As I just wrote on the pcc web page, I have the 
accompanying tools
also (as/ld/dbx/...) available, and I think it would be quick to make 
them useable.

-- Ragge