Re: [Tinycc-devel] Compiling mupdf on X86_64 fails

[Aharon Robbins]

Hello.

> Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:14:15 +0100
> From: Armin Steinhoff <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [Tinycc-devel] Compiling mupdf on X86_64 fails
>
> Hi,
>
> I got in the meantime the impression that we have to define what's
> supported by tcc and whar's not supported.
>
> I never saw a commitment that tcc supports X86_64 and I saw never a
> statement that tcc supports fully all assembler directives.
>
> IMHO ... it is better to concentrate on the 32 bit version for x86 and
> ARM ... with well defines restrictions.
>
> tcc was never designed to cook your coffee :)
>
> --Armin

As someone else replied, x86_64 support has been in tcc for quite a while
and is an important platform. Anyone doing non-embedded Linux development
is most likely using x86_64 these days.  Even Windows is moving towards
making 64 bit the default; in the huge company where I work, the default
installs of Windows 7 and 8 are the 64 bit ones.

TCC is very noticeably faster than GCC, even on fairly fast hardware,
such as a Sandy Bridge Core i7, and even with make -j 10.  (With TCC,
I almost don't *need* make -j!).  So, to say, "let's toss out x86_64
support" isn't a very wise decision.

If TCC would support generation of PIC code on x86_64, I would immediately
switch to it as my default compiler for gawk development.

I agree with the general sentiment, which is that TCC should not try to
be all things to all people, or support many different kinds of inline
assembly statements and so on.  But complete support of the platforms
it does work on is both a reasonable goal and a correct one.

Thanks,

Arnold