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Re: GCC 4.1: Buildable on GHz machines only?
On Wednesday 27 April 2005 22:06, Paul Koning wrote:
> >>>>> "Steven" == Steven Bosscher <s.bosscher@student.tudelft.nl> writes:
>
> Steven> On Wednesday 27 April 2005 17:45, Matt Thomas wrote:
> >> If no one builds natively on older platforms, the recognition that
> >> the new features maybe a problem for older platforms will never be
> >> made.
>
> Steven> Maybe the older platform should stick to the older compiler
> Steven> then, if it is too slow to support the kind of compiler that
> Steven> modern systems need.
>
> Maybe I'm missing something, but...
>
> Isn't a full bootstrap (all languages) part of the required test
> procedure for changes? That's what the website says right now.
Isn't there a special text about port changes? Some ports don't even
support all languages.
> Since
> Matt is the Vax port maintainer, he therefore has good reasons for
> needing to run bootstraps on slow machines.
Yes, he has. Is that a valid reason to call GCC4 a pig? No.
> Your comment seems to translate to: "when GCC grows to the point that
> you can't reasonably run a full bootstrap on platform X anymore, then
> platform X is obsolete". That seems like a strange new obsoletion
> criterion.
Interesting way of arguing. First you twist my words and put something
in my mouth that I did not say, then you comment on that...
What I'm saying is that if you really want/need for some reason to do
full bootstraps of the latest and greatest GCC on something as old and
slow as m68k (the old kind), VAX, or PDP-11, you should not complain
that other people have moved on to recent targets where a bootstrap is
not such a big deal and the new features in GCC make the difference
between a good or poor compiler for that target.
I don't think there's any disagreement that GCC is not as fast as it
should be. But bootstrapping <insert SLOC count here>[*] lines of code
on a real VAX is just never going to be very fast. There is no reason
to blame GCC for that.
Gr.
Steven
[*] Does anyone have an idea of how large GCC really is?