Slashdot Mirror
GCC Turns 25
eldavojohn writes "With the release of GCC 4.7.0, the venerable and stalwart constant that is the GNU Compiler Collection turns twenty five. More ISO standards and architectures supported with this release and surely more memories to come from the compiler that seems to have always been."
Actually, while PC duffers were futzing with 16 bit Computer Innovations C, Lattice C, Microsoft C 1.0 in 1983, which was pretty much just a ripoff of Lattice C, then through the 80s with Microsoft C 2.0 through 6.0, with the first hesitant entry to 32 bits in 5.0 near the end of that period (even though there was no proper Microsoft 32 bit OS available yet at that time), REAL embedded programmers were working with 32 bit 68000, 68010, and 68020 using Green Hills C and compact deterministic real-time multi-tasking kernels such as VRTX.
Green Hills C was a significant improvement on the Portable C Compiler that came with SunOS and other BSD based unixes in those days.
When gcc finally matured, it was an ENORMOUS boon. The action nowadays is moving to Clang/LLVM though. With Clang, you don't have to compile a separate version for every cross-compile target. Every Clang executable is capable of producing code for any of the supported targets just by using the right run-time options. Of course, this doesn't address the point that you still need appropriate assemblers, linkers,libraries, startup code etc for each target. But they are trying to get a handle even on that with the Clang Universal Driver Project.
Pastel was an extended Pascal compiler developed by LLNL for the S-1 supercomputer project
http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/s1.html
It, and several other significant pieces of software, including the SCALD hardware design language
were made freely available by LLNL. I have one version of the compiler, which was donated to the
Computer History Museum by one of its authors. I have been looking for the other pieces since the
late 80's.
If you look at the GNU Manifesto, RMS was also looking at using the MIT Trix kernel in the early days
of the project.
Deliberate misinformation. You are free, of course, to do whatever you want to with binaries produced by GCC. GCC's license is completely irrelevant unless you're modifying or extending GCC itself.
Nice try, though.
Are you an Apple shill in your spare time?
I'm trying to read this thread, and I have to put up with your repetitive posts about how great clang is. Why don't you read some of the replies to your crap? They do a good job of debunking your claims. I have mod points, but I just hate moderating people down, even if they waste my time repeating unfounded assertions (also known as bullshit).