From: Thomas Demmer Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: How could DJGPP remain the best? Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 17:16:14 +0100 Organization: Lehrstuhl fuer Stroemungsmechanik Lines: 41 Message-ID: <32D66B4E.41C6@LSTM.Ruhr-UNI-Bochum.De> References: <5b5l0r$b3h AT nexp DOT crl DOT com> NNTP-Posting-Host: bvb.lstm.ruhr-uni-bochum.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit CC: weiqigao AT crl DOT com To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Weiqi Gao wrote: > > OK, it's Friday, and I'm have free-flowing thoughts. > > One of them is this: We keep hearing that DJGPP is the best compiler > in its class. But how could that be so if the complete source code is > awailable publicly. Couldn't the people at, say, Watcom, simply > examine the code and come up with better ideas? Sure, they could. But I think the concept of the RTL as an intermediate state is quite unique to gcc. It was simply necessary for the design of a platform independent, or better CPU independent, compiler. As most optimizing on the RTL, gcc can ''see'' much better which data-paths are critical. This allows peep-hole optimization on a nearly global peep-hole (so it isn't a peep hole anymore). AFAIK most other compilers assign registers and such in an earlier stage of compilation. This means, Watcom would have to completely rewrite their code-generator to benefit from the ideas inside gcc. Where they could steal ideas are the library sources. That might be a problem. Nice weekend. -- Ciao Tom ************************************************************* * Thomas Demmer * * Lehrstuhl fuer Stroemungsmechanik * * Ruhr-Uni-Bochum * * Universitaetsstr. 150 * * D-44780 Bochum * * Tel: +49 234 700 6434 * * Fax: +49 234 709 4162 * * Voice/Fax Box: +49 2561 91371 2056 * * http://www.lstm.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/~demmer * *************************************************************