Re: SGI releases IA64 C C++ and F90 compiler under GPL

[Matt Austern <austern at sgi dot com>]

Andi Kleen writes:
 > "Martin v. Loewis" <martin@loewis.home.cs.tu-berlin.de> writes:
 > 
 > > > So what I'm saying is: this isn't out of the question, but you also
 > > > shouldn't expect it to happen next week.  The SGI compiler group
 > > > management knows about the discussion on this mailing list.
 > > 
 > > Thanks for the insight; I hope this will conclude the discussion.
 > 
 > The most important part of the discussion seems to got lost:
 > Which parts of pro64 would be useful for gcc at all and makes it sense to 
 > port anything at all given he differences in basic infrastructure and 
 > language? 
 > 
 > At least the F90 frontend could be used without any gcc changes at all --
 > if I understand correctly it can generate C from its internal representation.

Not in a tremendously useful sense.  There is a whirl2c translator
(and a whirl2f translator) but they were never written with the intent
of being used as a compiler phase.  They are mainly a diagnostic aid
so that you can follow the WHIRL better.  It might be possible to use
the f90 front end and whirl2f as a sort of f2c replacement, but it
would take some work.  (And besides, is f2c really your model for what
a good Fortran compiler should look like?)

If you're seriously thinking about using the f90 front end as part of
gcc, or any of the optimizer components, it might be more interesting
to think about whirl to rtl translation.

                        --Matt