MS/CW-style inline assembly for GCC

[Matt Austern]

On May 7, 2004, at 11:57 AM, Mark Mitchell wrote:

> Dale Johannesen wrote:
>
>> On May 6, 2004, at 6:40 PM, 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.
>>
>>
>> I've been staying out of this since I'm of the "they should be 
>> writing .s files" school,  but
>> criticizing the idea *on these grounds* seems unreasonable.
>
> I'm not criticizing the idea because it makes sense to Apple's 
> product-marketing people, and I'm certainly not trying to draw any 
> moral conclusion about Apple's desires.  Doing what makes sense for 
> your company is what running a business is all about.  My point was 
> only that I don't think that the primary motivation from Apple is that 
> this is a better assembly syntax; the primary motiviation is that it's 
> CW-compatible.

I don't think the two can be separated as simply as that.  Apple is not 
at all shy about telling our developers that they need to switch to 
newer technology, *if* we think the new thing is better.

The trouble is that gcc is incompatible with CW and also, in their 
opinion and ours, worse.  We can't tell them that they should switch to 
gcc's syntax because it's better; not with a straight face, anyway.  
Any of our developers who look at the two side by side know it isn't.

If you can come up with an assembly syntax that's genuinely better than 
CW's, and if we can convincingly tell our developers that it's better, 
then we really will consider telling our developers they should convert 
their code.

			--Matt