Gcc certification

[Robert Dewar]

Joe Buck wrote:

> The same is true of all other compilers that could conceivably be used
> instead.  There are no bug-free compilers.

Yes, absolutely, thanks Joe for clarifying this. Not only is the production
of a certified compiler a daunting task, far beyond what we can do now, but
we also lack clear formal language specifications to use as a starting point.

Even certifying a compiler for a very small subset of a language like
C++ or Ada is a huge task. There was a project at Boeing that claimed
to be a proof of concept, but it was never certified. Furthermore it
used interpretive tables for a lot of processing, claiming that the
tables did not have to be certified since they were not code, but it
is not clear that this would have been considered a valid approach.

So in short, gcc is no more or less credible than competing
proprietary compilers in this regard, certifying the compiler
itself is currently not on the table, and the way certification
is done is to certify the resulting object code.