Portable C Compiler 1.0 Has Been Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Portable C Compiler 1.0 Has Been Released

Development on the Portable C Compiler (PCC) began back in the 1970's, but this week version 1.0 of this BSD-licensed compiler was finally released...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTI4Mw

[psycho_driver]

By "faster than gcc" did you mean:
1) Faster compilation time
or
2) Faster compiled code
?

1 wouldn't be that big of a deal these days if 2 wasn't equal to or better.

[deanjo]

By "faster than gcc" did you mean:
1) Faster compilation time
or
2) Faster compiled code
?

1 wouldn't be that big of a deal these days if 2 wasn't equal to or better.

Could be either/or. All depends on what it is compiling.

[Awesomeness]

For decades the BSDs were waiting for a non-GPL compiler – hoping for PCC or TenDRA to be finally good enough.

Now PCC is finally “done” but nobody cares anymore because now there is Clang (LLVM) with many full-time Apple employees working on it and at least FreeBSD set to switch from an ancient GCC version to Clang by FreeBSD 9.

[susikala]

For decades the BSDs were waiting for a non-GPL compiler – hoping for PCC or TenDRA to be finally good enough.

Now PCC is finally “done” but nobody cares anymore because now there is Clang (LLVM) with many full-time Apple employees working on it and at least FreeBSD set to switch from an ancient GCC version to Clang by FreeBSD 9.

I wouldn't trust, nor ever use, something developed/backed by Apple, so FreeBSD is slowly but surely becoming a no go zone to me.

[staalmannen]

Very cool!

I am currently trying to set up some AURs for a self-hosting PCC (I was also hoping to make them compile with Bionic* but that seems to fail at the moment)

The PCC libs compile with no issues with PCC
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=47877

I have some problems with compiling PCC itself with PCC though.
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=47554

If anyone got ideas how to solve those issues, I would be very happy


* sort of similar to the uClibc+tcc bundle
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=47342

Ps. Bionic is available for Arch
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=44629
If anyone knows how to make this thing work nicely as an alternative C library, I would be interested in that too
Ds.

[deanjo]

I wouldn't trust, nor ever use, something developed/backed by Apple, so FreeBSD is slowly but surely becoming a no go zone to me.

That is really paranoia talking. By doing so you can kiss openCL, CUPS, webkit and LLVM goodbye. (and that's just to start with)

[XorEaxEax]

I don't see why you would shun anything just because Apple has a hand in it. LLVM is of great use, particularly it's jit-capabilities which helps fill a void for alot of open source projects and same goes for many of the other projects Apple support. And it's not as if these projects are developed solely by Apple, there are lots of independant contributors so even if Apple (unlikely) would stop submitting their changes as open source there would certainly not mean the end of either project.

Obviously Apple is not supporting these projects due to the goodness of their hearts, they support permissively licenced projects (bsd, mit) because they can use them in their proprietary commercial solutions, unlike gpl licenced projects. But as long as they keep on sharing the source that's just fine with me.

As for pcc, last I tried it (granted, quite some time ago) it was fast in compiling but had pretty bad optimization, will be interesting to see how much has changed since then.

[pvtcupcakes]

I wonder if I can compile my Gentoo system with it.
I kind of doubt it, but it'd be interesting to see someone try.

[staalmannen]

I wonder if I can compile my Gentoo system with it.
I kind of doubt it, but it'd be interesting to see someone try.

Apparently the FreeBSD kernel can be compiled. Since it was not that much time between the anouncement that Clang could compile FreeBSD and that Clang (sort of) could compile Linux, I suppose it could be worth a shot

Guessing that it would take some more work though since there are less people working on it.

The last thing I heard was that OpenBSD was aiming for PCC as their system compiler... I do not know how far they have gotten with that though.