Re: Newbie question: What is the importance for a compiler to be able to compile itself?

On 2009-05-20, Jeremy Wright <jeremy.wright@microfocus.com> wrote:
>> Hans-Peter wrote:
>>
>> You'll find out when you want to port your compiler to a new platform.
>> If it doesn't support the language you wrote your compiler in, or that
>> other compiler there doesn't behave as expected, you're almost lost.
>
> You can turn this around, and make it an argument against
> self-residency in the compiler. There is a danger that you come to
> rely on non-standard extensions to the language, and worse : implicit
> non-standard extensions to the semantic definition of the language.


And why wouldn't you get reliant on similar feature with an arbitrary
different compiler used? (like gccisms) Only actively compiling with
multiple compilers avoids that situation, so self-residency or not is
irrelevant in this case.


And then it is of course a different question all together if this is that
bad at all. Do you really want your compiler and runtime (which is a bigger
problem than the compiler, since you are more likely to use extensions
there) to be written and limited by the lowest common denomitor?


No language extensions, no platform extensions, no ability to use inline
assembler features etc.

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