Re: Converting the gcc backend to a library?

[Mikael Djurfeldt <mdj at mdj dot nada dot kth dot se>]

Sorry for not being able to participate in the very interesting
discussion which followed my question---I simply know too little about
the technical and political implications of the kind of change I
suggested, so I decided to just listen to what you had to say.

It seems obvious that there is a need of dynamic compilation in many
projects, and many people, more skilled and knowledgeable concerning
gcc than I, are willing to volunteer implementing this change, or
parts of it.

I just hope that the political problems can be solved within
reasonable time and that a sense of how, more specifically, to take
the first steps can develop.

Of course, we ultimately would like to compile to opcodes directly.

Given that this process can be predicted to be quite slow, I've
decided to base my interpreter on a virtual machine for now.

I really hope that other people will continue to drive this question,
though.  It would be quite nice if GCC is mature to support
compilation directly into opcodes by the time my interpreter is up and
running.  :-)

Finally, I'd like to thank you for all informative replies.  I'd
especially like to thank Martin v. Loewis and Tim Josling.

Best regards,
/mdj