>There has been some work to have gcc emit bytecodes that could be
>interpreted, but I don't know when/if this will be mature and if the
>bytecode streams will be machine independant.

There still is some work on the gcc bytecode.  And bytecode is NOT machine
independent.  It uses the machine's alignments and data sizes along with
some actual machine instructions (in the current configuration).

-- 
Phil Nelson
e-mail: phil@cs.wwu.edu
http://www.cs.wwu.edu/~phil