Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] GCC (was Re: Re: Command abbreviations)

[Miles Bader]

On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 03:36:09PM -0800, Tom Lord wrote:
>     >    I don't know why that would be true, since it would reverse the
>     > trend of all the other software projects in existence.
> 
> Out of curiosity, please elaborate.

I think he was just making a cynical remark that software bloat is more the
norm than the exception these days.

Of course anyone who's ever hacked on gcc can see how absurd, bloated, and
full of insane historical cruft it is, but ... well, we'll see.

The thing is that the wide range of supported architectures is one gcc's
biggest strengths, and any clean rewrite, even if it attempted to maintain
some degree of compability with existing backends, would very likely not work
on many.  To the best of my knowledge, some of the biggest gcc supporters are
those who in fact use non-mainstream archs (e.g., embedded systems companies,
etc), so there seems to be a bit of a conflict there...

Maybe there'll be a split, with a gcc rewrite or an outside competitor taking
over on the x86 and a few other big archs, and gcc continuing to bumble along
in the embedded market.

-Miles
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