alternative compilers

[ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com>]

fyi, you can get nix, but you can't get a real 64-bit compiler for
AMD. Why am I saying this? Isn't amd64 64-bit?

Yes, but ... 6c/6l don't produce code that can use 64 bit pointers.
The pointers are always truncated to 32 bits, so you have to use
pointers that sign extend, i.e.
kernel mode pointers have to be ffffffff'80000000 or greater, and user
pointers have to be 7fffffff or less. Yes, I'm well aware that stack
is at 7fff ffffffff but that's actually a special case.

So, question, anyone interested in making other compilers work on
9front? If so, which ones?

you may find this hard to  believe. If you do, take this code:
#include <u.h>
#include <libc.h>
char data = 5;
b(void){
	 char *c = &data ;
	return *c * 5;
}
main()
{
	int i;
	print("&i %#p\n", &i);
	print("Good morning\n");
	print("%d\n", b());
}
/* 6c b.c; 6l -R0x20000000 b.6; nm -n 6.out */

and run this command:
6l -a -R0x20000000 b.6

and looked at the code for b(). Then come back and talk :-)

ron
p.s. Of course, another option is to modify 6l to do better. That
would be cool too. But at the same time, I'm not so sure how long this
should go on. Maybe we should use this one: http://bellard.org/tcc/