From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Wed,  7 Jun 2006 19:58:31 -0600
From: Latchesar Ionkov <lucho@gmx.net>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] gcc on plan9
Message-ID: <20060608015831.GA3517@ionkov.net>
References: <200606071450.40128.corey_s@qwest.net>
	<0687d9b7f3ee8d0f6da02f7c9af09b9f@collyer.net>
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I don't understand why is all that fuss about the gcc port. If you don't
like it, don't use it. Few of the current Plan9 users are going to use it.
But if the gcc port brings more developers to Plan9, I don't see how that
can be bad. 

Thanks,
	Lucho

On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 04:04:27PM -0700, geoff@collyer.net said:
> I use f2c when I need to compile Fortran (or, more likely, Ratfor).
> Have GNU extended Fortran too?  Or do you need to compile programs
> that make use of features added to Fortran by later standards (though
> I'm not sure that GNU Fortran will help here)?
> 
> I guess I don't see what's so offensive about rio and acme.  A hazard
> is that once one starts adding things to attract novice users (e.g.,
> shiney things) or people who are used to some particular (l)unix
> configuration (e.g., windows managers, graphical toolkits, the GNU
> world), the resulting system will be bigger, slower and clumsier.  If
> you use gcc routinely, you lose the speed of 8c.  As an example of the
> cumulative effect of such accretion, a friend reported compiling a Red
> Hat kernel from scratch recently and it only took about an hour (vs.
> the 10 minutes it took to compile V6 in 1977 on slow disks, or the 85
> seconds to compile 9pc on oldish PC hardware today).
> 
> It may not be feasible, for example due to gcc's asm constructs, but
> it would seem more satisfying to write a gcc-to-c preprocessor.  Of
> course that doesn't help with C++; if only we had a Cfront for current
> C++.