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Re: CIL back-end
Roberto COSTA wrote:
> Ori Bernstein wrote:
> >On Mon, 12 Jun 2006 09:50:13 +0200, Roberto COSTA <roberto.costa@st.com>
> >said:
> >
> >
> >>Hello,
> >>
> >>I'm working for an R&D organization of STMicroelectronics. Within our
> >>team we have decided to write a gcc back-end that produces CIL binaries
> >>(compliant with ECMA specification, see
> >>http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-335.htm).
> >>Our main motivation is the ability to produce highly-optimized CIL
> >>binaries out of plain C code (and C++ in the future), and possibly to
> >>add some optimizations to improve, if needed, the quality of the
> >>generated code.
> >
> >
> >It seems that there's a Summer of Code student working on the exact same
> >item:
> >http://code.google.com/soc/mono/about.html
> >
> >Perhaps you could collaborate with him, or (as I believe the Summer of Code
> >rules might require) build off his work after it gets submitted. I'd
> >suggest
> >you contact the Mono project about it.
>
> Thanks for the info.
> A few days ago, the student posted a help request to gcc-help mailing
> list (http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-help/2006-06/msg00018.html), which shows
> he's at an early stage of the work.
Yi Wang, here is an early attempt to a RTL based CIL backend, together
with the difficulties of dealing with such a low level representation,
"GCC .NET---a feasibility study". Jeremy Singer. In Proceedings of the
First International Workshop on C# and .NET Technologies, pages
55--62. Feb 2003. http://wscg.zcu.cz/Rotor/NET_2003/Papers/Singer.pdf
so I think that an RTL CIL generator is really not a good idea.
> I think in my team we're at a more advanced stage, since we have ideas
> about how to do things and we start having some prototype code.
> I hope a collaboration is possible; I will certainly contact him and the
> mentor of the SoC project about it. If there are restrictions imposed by
> SoC rules, it's up to them to let me know.
>
> By the way, from the previous messages, I understand that the inclusion
> of a CIL back-end into gcc cannot be taken as granted until the issue is
> discussed and an approval is obtained.
> In the meantime, I hope this doesn't prevent requesting a development
> branch. Without that, it would be much more difficult to build a
> collaborative, open and world-wide visible development environment.
>
> Not working on the development of the CIL back-end, or even letting it
> stalled, is not a choice for my team and myself.
> What is a choice is to share its development and the related
> infrastructure in the most open way... I think it's the best choice, for
> all parties; I really hope it's a viable one!
>
> Cheers,
> Roberto