Re: GCC is 25 years old today

>>> In your views, what has been GCC's main contribution to the world of
>>> compilers?
>>
>> maybe, being free.
>
> But GCC isn't the only free compiler out there, and yet no other
> compiler, paid or free, managed to attain the same level of
> popularity. Couldn't it be possible that GCC's success is owed to
> some determining factor other than price?


GCC is effectively required for the Linux kernel, among other things,
which creates a surprisingly effective lock-in market considering only
free software is involved :-). Once GCC was established, it means that
any serious new compiler would have to both include most of GCC's
extensions, mirror its command line (to insert itself into most build
scripts easily), and get similar performance to be taken
seriously--which amounts to a very tall order. Of course, in the past
few years, the Clang/LLVM infrastructure has progressed well enough to
be able to tackle the hegemony of GCC.


--
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth

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