GCC 3.3 compile speed regression - THE GRAPH

[Neil Booth]

Fergus Henderson wrote:-

> Those who are interested in compilation speed may be interested in
> the Tiny C Compiler, tcc <http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/tcc/>.

However, please let's be fair in comparisons.  As I noted on the
kernel list recently, tcc is not a fair comparison:

o It doesn't have half the capabilities that GCC's C front end
  has.  But one simple example is -E.
o tcc doesn't have to worry about other OS's or other target
  arch's.
o tcc has almost *no* semantic or syntactic checking.  It accepts
  all kinds of garbage.  It's easy to be fast when you don't do half
  the work.  While its author claims C89 compliance, in reality
  it's nowhere near.
o tcc doesn't even expand macros correctly.  I could tell that
  just glancing at the source.  It's hard to demonstrate owing
  to lack of -E.

So please, let's not compare with tcc until it's a real compiler.

Comparisons with LCC are fair.  You'll note that I'm pushing hard
for a better C front end, and not making excuses for GCC.  We
certainly are way too slow.

Neil.