Date: Tue, 23 Sep 1997 18:02:04 -0700 (MST)
From: firewind <firewind AT metroid DOT dyn DOT ml DOT org>
To: Orlando Andico <orly AT dilnet DOT upd DOT edu DOT ph>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: DJGPP and optimized code
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.3.96.970923192505.21675A-100000@gibson.eee.upd.edu.ph>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.95.970923174103.401B-100000@metroid.dyn.ml.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Precedence: bulk


I apologize in advance for my somewhat off-topic rambling.

On Tue, 23 Sep 1997, Orlando Andico wrote:
> I agree that in general, sticking with gcc is smarter. But will DJGPP
> _ever_ adopt anything from egcs? I know it's experimental, but the
> performance improvements are quite impressive (I've attached a simple
> benchmark that I've made).

No. egcs is not gcc, while DJGPP is a port of gcc. On gnu.misc.discuss
there is much debate about the whole egcs vs. gcc thing, and the Cygnus
(egcs makers) view is that egcs is a sort of unstable gcc; kind of like
egcs is to Linux 2.1.xx as gcc is to 2.0.xx. gcc will eventually have the
functionality of egcs, but not until it is thoroughly tested. Meaning,
egcs has a more open policy WRT improvements being added to the main
source tree.

I quote Mike Stump, the maintainer of g++:
} Cygnus feels that more progress can be made faster, by adopting the
} fast paced Linux model.  I agree.  egcs is that experiment.

Indeed, it is speculated that by the time gcc v3.0.0 is shipping, the egcs
and gcc source trees will have remerged.

Stump again:
} It is my hope that FSF gcc turns into a very stable, slow moving
} compiler and that egcs becomes what will become gcc 3.0, at that time,
} the 2.x line will be scaled back, the FSF will fold in egcs as their
} own, and life goes on.

It is important to note that egcs is still technically GNU software; any
and all patches made to egcs are legally (and this is recognized by
Cygnus) owned by the FSF, and they are within their rights to apply egcs
patches to their own gcc source tree at any given time. This is unlikely
to happen (until the merge, at least; but hopefully FSF will begin to
integrate -some- parts of egcs before this) but it is important to
remember.

Toon Moene (g77 worker) says:
} [...] all of the source changes are assigned to the FSF, and relegated to
} the gcc2 mainainer.

> There is a DJGPP binary on www.goof.com; is this ever going to be part of
> the standard distribution? anyway, below are the results of the
> CPU-intensive test I did.

I hope so. While I do not believe that egcs should -replace- the standard
gcc package, I do believe it should be included as an alternate.

> [impressive test results]

Wow. Makes me wish (again) I had a Pentium. ;)

late\fw