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Re: MS/CW-style inline assembly for GCC
Mark Mitchell wrote:
For me, compatibility is the number one priority. Ease of use comes
That's what I figured. :-)
So, let's take truth-and-beauty out of the discussion; this isn't
about a better technology. It might or might not be better, but
that's not the root of the issue. The bottom line is that Apple wants
CW syntax because it wants to convert existing CW users to GCC users.
To do that, it wants to be able to say "you can just recompile your
code" rathern than "you have to rewrite your code". In fact, for all
widely-used CW extensions, Apple would probably like to see them in
GCC. It's easy to see the Apple product-marketing logic here.
By ignoring the second part of my point, you're misrepresenting my
position. I do believe the CW syntax would be of general interest,
and volunteered to put forth some extra time and effort to make it
useful and maintainable on all platforms. The CW syntax has had a
number of years of practical experience, and it seems like a better
idea to start with it rather to make up something random with no user
input or user experience behind it. It would be much easier and much
less work on my part for it to be an Apple-only feature, and indeed
it is already done and working as such, so I wouldn't have proposed
it for FSF GCC if I didn't think it was of wider interest.
I actually think it would be nice to have the CW functionality in the
FSF GCC -- on an Apple-specific branch. It would be good if Apple
users could use the FSF repository. But, the non-Apple developers
don't want to have to deal with these extensions; they provide no
benefit to non-Apple developers. If Apple checks in these extensions,
in any way that touches code outside of darwin.[hc], then all
developers pay a cost -- but reap no benefit. The non-Apple
developers are seeing this as somewhat technically dubious
functionality of no general utility, but with non-zero cost now and in
future.
You know, CodeWarrior is not an Apple-only thing; their compiler is
used by game programmers and for other embedded development. GCC
has been automatically shut out of a bunch of those areas by not
having desired features (the inline asm syntax being one of them
in fact), which is maybe why you haven't heard much about it.
But, in the absence of anybody expressing any interest at all,
there's little point in continuing the discussion.
Stan