On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 04:35:36PM +0100, Paul Onyschuk wrote: > On Fri, 20 Dec 2013 13:49:43 +0100 > Sylvain BERTRAND <sylw...@legeek.net> wrote: > > > Is there any remaining good c++ compiler/runtime which can > > boostrap using a C compiler/minimal runtime? > > > > Since, it's near impossible to re-write/unroll all the > > "mandatory" c++ components in C quickly (harfbuzz, > > gecko/webkit...), what to do? Any suggestions? > > Not that I'm aware of, beside I'm not sure what benefits this would > bring? You're fine with C++ in one place, but not the other?
Actually, the only c++ components which bother me are "modern" javascript-enabled www renderers and harfbuzz (but I coded a C _partial_ port). netsurf is far from being usable on www sites where javascript is mandatory. > > There is also the question of finding a new C99 optimizing > > compiler written properly in C of course. > > > > Anything else? > > This is valid question on other hand e.g. base OpenBSD is C++ free for > some time AFAIK (after the removal of groff). Idea of minimal set of > tools, capable of rebuilding itself is attractive. Oh! What openbsd uses for its man page terminal renderer? I'm stuck with the buggy heirloom tools. > On one hand, you can use pretty old GCC and most of C codebase will > compile just fine (OpenBSD still uses patched GCC v4.2.1, which is more > than six years old). C is stable - you will more likely see changes in > standard C library, than compiler/language itself. GCC v4.7.x should > work just fine for some years to come. ARM64 is on its way, which will require a backport in gcc 4.7.x. > C++ is different kind of beast. More and more software requires C++11 > features and this means very recent version of compilers, especially > since C++ standard libraries are developed inside the same projects > (GCC/libstdc++, Clang/libc++). Sticking to GCC v4.7.x isn't an option > here as far I can tell. Yes... c++ is a fast moving target. Since its implementation cost is just insane, coding from scratch a C implementation seems unreasonnable. We will have to chain compile gccs to reach a c++11 compiler and runtime. Basically, this is laughing right at the face of the entire planet. > The last problem: C99-capable compiler isn't enough to get usable > system based on Linux. Clang which was designed as GCC drop-in > replacement chokes on Linux kernel (some patches are needed), because > it heavily uses GCC extensions and specific features (some > undocumented/undefined). That's very bad. Linux kernel devs have not accepted patches to allow compilation with alternative C compilers??
