Re: lcc intel backend?

nick@nsis.cl.nec.co.jp (Gavin Thomas Nicol) writes:
=> Is there a [345]86 backend for lcc under development anywhere? It seems
=> that with the various free Unix's becoming available, and usable on
=> slower/smaller pc's, that a fast, and small compiler might be desirable.
=> (I guess this is almost blasphemey now that everyone uses gcc, but it *is*
=> pretty heavy on resources.)


A few remarks are in place here, I guess.


1) Other people might differ on this, but as soon I you said free Unix I
don't consider size of much importance for compilers. And my guess is that
the code generator part of gcc isn't taking an abnormal piece of the code.
If you are considering MessyDos (aka. interrupt-handler) then you have a
point, but even there are extenders available which also you to run BIG
programs in flat space. Even on my old and lowly 386/DX 20Mhz, no cache
box, was I pleased with Emx/Gnu's performance. So why are you asking
this?


2) Backend generators I know of, since I have pieces of code for them on
my disk are: (next to the GCC, which I find very complex)


  - BEG, by Helmut Emmelman. He works currently at GMD/Karlsruhe/Germany.
      but that site is being closed down. And the latest I've heard is that
      BEG has become part of an Esprit project and Helmut is going to continue
      working on it.


      One of his students did a BEG-end :-) for the Modula-2 compiler GMD has,
      and they were considering to make it PD for Linux. (that is the backend,
      not BEG)


      I'm using(/going to use) BEG as backend generator in my processor
      description system. And I've made a test run with a 386 BEGend in
      combination with my PASCAL frontend. (NO FP, yet)


  - The other codegenerator I looked at, uses BURS, and is called IBURG.
      it is freely available for ftp(, and non-commercial use??)
      I've not used it other than for evaluation of the tool itself. And though
      BURS seem a good way of implementing a backend.
      The tools are rather thin, and primitive.


      Maybe I'll "trick" on of my students to do a 386 version in IBURG.


There are many more code-generator-generators, but only these tools I could
get hold of. (BEG cost ~$250 for a tape, and IBURG is free)


Willem Jan Withagen
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