Re: [9fans] Rant (was Re: Plan9 and Ada95?)

[Lucio De Re <lucio@proxima.alt.za>]

On Wed, Nov 07, 2001 at 01:56:02PM -0500, David Gordon Hogan wrote:
>
> No, it's a symptom of ``I wasted weeks of my life struggling
> with this awful code''.
>
Which I'm sure it is.  But a lot of effort has gone into it, and even
though they may not be giants, the GCC developers are hard working
people with good intentions and a legacy that cannot summarily be
discarded.

> > In the meantime, if I want to cross-develop for Windows or Linux,
> > or any other established platforms, Plan 9 is just no use to me,
> > while GCC and its offspring are.  I know what my choice would be,
> > but it's no choice, is it?  Oh, I forget the Inferno tools, those
>
> GCC (Cygnus) is useless for Windows.  There's no way to link
> a VXD!  So if you're doing any _serious_ development, are you
> going to use two compilers, just so you can have the dubious
> pleasure of using GCC?  I don't think so.
>
Unless I'm much mistaken, there's been a flurry of activity in that
direction (I'm afraid I'm only a very superficial follower of the
binutils efforts, I could not follow the GCC mailing list too, it
would be wasted on me) and I got the impression that good results were
obtained.

> I'm sorry to be so ascerbic here, but I am sick of hearing people
> defending GCC.
>
Surely it is more the case that people attack GCC?  It doesn't need
defending, it is by far the most common Unix language compiler, unless
I'm missing something.  I'm frightened to bits of what will happen
when it grows too large to be manageable, but the army of ants that
are still holding it together deserve admiration, not insults.

GCC is like a very large city.  None of it makes sense, but its
citizens cannot escape from it.  Nor can a more logical, more user
friendly version be built to replace it, it will just not succeed.
Think Brazilia.

> Why don't you help us improve the Inferno tools instead of
> complaining about them?
>
Huh?  Quite the contrary, the only flaw I found in the Inferno tools
was that I totally forgot about them - maybe because when I tried to
use them, they complained about a missing rcmain.  As soon as I can
figure out how to use them, I'll be only too pleased to do so.
Specially that old favourite of mine, the rc shell, which I presume is
what rcsh.exe is (lack of documentation, while excusable, is a bit of
a problem).

And the fact that at the present value of our currency, the Inferno
sources (I presume I need that licence to help develop the Inferno
tools) would cost me one month's income :-(

> You want suggestions?  We could force all those GNU people to read
> Rob's essay on programming style, for starters.
>
I guess software bloat is like being overweight is like late software
projects: one bit at the time.  Adn by the time you take stock the
effort involved in undoing the damage may be far too much.

> I have a cunning plan to use 8c to generate files that will
> run under Windows 9x/Me.  Stay tuned...
>
And MS-DOS?  I still use Zortech C to produce .COM files - shouldn't
be exactly a tall order.  CYGWIN isn't quite as slick, but it's
more consistent with what I find familiar.  Sorry, didn't meant to
be tangential, please let me know as you progress, I think the idea
is excellent.

Now that I think about it, of course 8c is already being used for
that, I just need to figure out how.

> Yes, you'll have to use MS compilers for the VXD and EXE
> that get the show started, but that's it.  Unlike GCC, the
> pleasure of using 8c is real.
>
> I don't know about Nt/XP yet, but I'm guessing that they'll
> be harder.

I wouldn't touch 9x/Me if Nt/2000/XP (I'm guessing at the last two,
I'm time-warped with NT4.0SP6a) is available.  Too flimsy.  NT at
least stays up when a task fails, with the MS-DOS based OSes I can't
resist rebooting whenever something falls over.

++L