Re: GCC is 25 years old today

BGB schrieb:


> more recently, I have ended up mostly using MSVC, mostly because:
> it was also freely available (via the Platform SDK);
> it supported some features which at the time GCC didn't support (namely,
> Win64).


IMO GCC and Windows is a special case, because the GNU developers
never really wanted to support this (non-free non-POSIX) platform.
Cygwin and MinGW do not fully support the WinAPI, and lack further
development support. Most GNU projects, including the development
tools and libraries, do not build on Windows, they mostly fail already
in ./configure. In the context of this group it should be mentioned
that a bunch of *languages* are involved in building GCC/GNU projects,
even if these languages are mostly interpreted, not compiled. See
shell scripts, make and auto... extensions, M4 and whatever else is
required or suggested by the FSF.


IMO nowadays the bare compiler is the least important part, WRT the
choice of a *development system*. Languages are another issue: you'll
hardly find two C++ compilers which are ABI compatible, not to mention
compatibility with other OO languages.


Java went an radically different way WRT portable code, eliminating OS
dependencies in the VM instead of fragile adaptation in source code
and libraries. This approach makes it much easier to develop
applications for multiple platforms, including multiple POSIX flavors.
I may be wrong here, but IMO the availability of Linux applications
depends heavily on the goodwill of the platform maintainers, which
have to make every single project compile, build and run on their
specific platform. Even if this is not a compiler issue, it suggests
to properly consider the role of an compiler in the entire development
process.


DoDi

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