2015-11-27 0:21 GMT+01:00 Charles Forsyth <charles.forsyth@gmail.com>:

On 26 November 2015 at 23:08, Ryan Gonzalez <rymg19@gmail.com> wrote:
Holy crap, that's crazy. I built it in debug mode on Linux, but I don't think it used that much. I only have 6 GB right now!

You have to remember that a C compiler is one of the largest, most complex software components that human beings have ever had to produce.
The original C reference manual made it look deceptively easy, but really there's a ton of stuff going on in there, as you can see.
How they ever got it going on a system with 64Kbytes of address space, I'll never know.

I'd love to read more about this, Charles. :-)

I know nothing about compilers, but actually gcc and clang dimension and complexity is astonishing.

I've always thought that this is due to their desire to compile many different language optimized for many different OS and architectures on many different OS and architecture.

Alternative compilers, like tcc, only build C on very few architectures / os with almost no optimization: they are much smaller, but still not standard compliant.

How can it be?

Giacomo