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Re: cxx-conversion a good idea?
- From: Andrew Haley <aph at redhat dot com>
- To: Nikos Fotoulis <nikofot at gmx dot com>
- Cc: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 11:05:25 +0100
- Subject: Re: cxx-conversion a good idea?
- References: <1346330620.5b9adb8ffe07@mail>
On 08/30/2012 01:43 PM, Nikos Fotoulis wrote:
> The cxx-conversion idea does not come without its cons. The most
> important for us is that there will not be a plain gcc-core package
> that is smaller, builds faster a plain C compiler with a smaller
> binary and is able to bootstrap future versions of a plain C
> compiler made of the latest vesion of gcc. The con is recursive.
>
> The pros are two as far as i can see:
>
> 1) The C++ frontend will be put to the test in the bootstrap
> proccess. This one indeed has some value.
>
> 2) The gcc codebase can become cleaner and/or faster. This one is
> arguable and it would take some real numbers to prove the extra
> bootstrap time is worth it.
>
> Please note that i'm speaking as someone who is developing software
> that is strictly C (and many projects are like that, including
> python, perl, ffmpeg, linux-kernel, etc, etc) and i'm interested to
> get the latest gcc-core snapshot occassionaly to test both gcc and
> my software. And the explosion of the tarball size and bootstrap
> time lately is very discouraging.
But, as a C developer, why do you care if GCC is written in C++?
What difference will that make to you?
Bear in mind that we have had the discussion about C++ conversion
for a long time, and we have considered the pros and the cons, and
we have made a decision.
Andrew.