Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/01/15/15:15:07
Weiqi Gao wrote:
>
> OK, it's Friday, and I'm have free-flowing thoughts.
>
> One of them is this: We keep hearing that DJGPP is the best compiler
> in its class. But how could that be so if the complete source code is
> awailable publicly. Couldn't the people at, say, Watcom, simply
> examine the code and come up with better ideas?
Sure, they could.
But I think the concept of the RTL as an intermediate state
is quite unique to gcc. It was simply necessary for the
design of a platform independent, or better CPU independent,
compiler. As most optimizing on the RTL, gcc can ''see''
much better which data-paths are critical. This
allows peep-hole optimization on a nearly global
peep-hole (so it isn't a peep hole anymore).
AFAIK most other compilers assign registers and such
in an earlier stage of compilation. This means, Watcom
would have to completely rewrite their code-generator
to benefit from the ideas inside gcc.
Where they could steal ideas are the library sources.
That might be a problem.
Nice weekend.
--
Ciao
Tom
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