Re: Newbie question: What is the importance for a compiler to be able to compi

Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:


> The Delphi compiler possibly is written in C/C++ (CBuilder), as have


The compiler is written entirely in C, except for some small bits for
integration with the IDE debugger, as an abstract base class
implementation, that forwards to C routines. It's compiled with bcc32.


> been parts of the libraries. At least Delphi 4 could not recompile the
> libraries, because the supplied library code contained some C
> snippets.


There is no C in a minimal Delphi RTL. You can compile System.pas with
the undocumented '-y' switch and proceed from there.


There are some things, such as zlib and jpeg libraries, which are
written in C, compiled to .obj files and linked into Delphi units, but
they aren't mandatory to get a working RTL.


It used to be the case that tasm32 was required, for certain
floating-point code; this code was shared between compiler and RTL for
consistency. When the built-in assembler was rewritten for better Linux
support, there was no longer a reliance on tasm32 in the RTL. The
compiler still uses that code for constant expression evaluation in
certain scenarios though.


The C/C++ compiler (bcc32) is compiled by itself. So I guess you could
say there are two compilers and an assembler involved, not to mention
the linkers / resource compilers etc.


-- Barry


--
http://barrkel.blogspot.com/

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.