Re: [9fans] partial-Plan9ification question

["Boyd Roberts" <boyd@fr.inter.net>]

From: "Rick Hohensee" <humbubba@smarty.smart.net>
>  Given a POSIXy unix, with lots of inline assembly interlaced in the C
> with Gcc asm(""), consider losing all the asm("") in lieu of C-called
> assembly and inlined C.

asm's?  who in their right mind uses those?  PUSy unix...

> This presents a factoring problem for header files
> and so on relative to unix. Given also that Plan 9's header structure is
> the best for languages like C, and given that we want that Plan9ism, but
> not the cross-compile facilities any time soon, how would you restructure
> the sources?

that is an oxymoron.

> (I'll be presuming my whole world is one cpu.)

very bad choice.  one of the big features of plan 9 is the
cross compiler stuff.  name one unix (or any other) system
that can do it.  well i'm a huge limbo fan, but that's
a virtual machine, but so what.

ever heard the expression?

    all the world's a vax

> I know I'll need a cpu.S, a cpu.o, but then things get variable. I'll
> also probably be doing ld-related #pragmas, and maybe a mk or a proto-mk
> in sh, but I don't know that that pertains to the above issue if I just
> assume one CPU. Care to comment, maestros?

one cpu?  where is the problem?  why not write in in assembler?

take a look at inferno's mash mk.

the only reasons for those hacks and cruft was back when machines
where big, expensive and slow.  sure an asm("movc3 ...");  may beat
strcpy but it will _bite_ you when you change compilers
(register allocation problem) or architectures.

like henry spencer once said:

    that little tin god efficiency