Re: GCC is 25 years old today

Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.net>
Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:17:31 -0500

          From comp.compilers

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[4 earlier articles]
Re: GCC is 25 years old today gah@ugcs.caltech.edu (glen herrmannsfeldt) (2012-03-28)
Re: GCC is 25 years old today mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de (Dmitry A. Kazakov) (2012-03-28)
Re: GCC is 25 years old today rui.maciel@gmail.com (Rui Maciel) (2012-03-28)
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Re: GCC is 25 years old today Pidgeot18@verizon.net (Joshua Cranmer) (2012-03-29)
Re: GCC is 25 years old today cr88192@hotmail.com (BGB) (2012-03-29)
Re: GCC is 25 years old today DrDiettrich1@aol.com (Hans-Peter Diettrich) (2012-03-30)
Re: GCC is 25 years old today mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de (Dmitry A. Kazakov) (2012-03-30)
Re: GCC is 25 years old today cr88192@hotmail.com (BGB) (2012-03-30)
Re: GCC is 25 years old today cr88192@hotmail.com (BGB) (2012-03-30)
Re: GCC is 25 years old today anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (2012-03-31)
[4 later articles]
| List of all articles for this month |
From: Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.net>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:17:31 -0500
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
References: 12-03-051 12-03-053 12-03-062
Keywords: GCC, history
Posted-Date: 30 Mar 2012 02:41:20 EDT

>>> 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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