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Re: dragonegg in FSF gcc?
On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 16:51, Steven Bosscher <stevenb.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
> You say you see benefits for both compilers. What benefits do you see
> for GCC then, if I may ask? And what can GCC take from LLVM? (And I
> mean the FSF GCC, long term.) This is an honest question, because I
> personally really don't see any benefit for GCC.
If comparisons between the two compilers are easy to make, then it's
easy to determine what one compiler is doing better than the other and
do the necessary port.
In terms of internal structure, LLVM is more modular, which simplifies
maintenance (e.g., the automatic bug finder, unit tests). The various
components of the pipeline have better separation and stronger APIs.
GCC has been slowly moving in that direction, but it still have ways
to go. LLVM has already proven that organizing the compiler that way
is advantageous (additionally, other research compilers were
structured similarly: Sage++, SUIF), so emulating that structure
sounds like a reasonable approach.
Another example where GCC may want to operate with LLVM is in JIT
compilation. Clearly, LLVM has made a significant investment in this
area. If GCC were to generate LLVM IR, it could just use all the JIT
machinery without having to replicate it.
There may be other things GCC could take advantage of.
OTOH, GCC has optimizer and codegen features that LLVM may want to
incorporate. I don't have specific examples, since I am not very
familiar with LLVM.
Diego.