In An Era Of Clang, Portable C Compiler Isn't Beloved

[phoronix]

Phoronix: In An Era Of Clang, Portable C Compiler Isn't Beloved

It's going on two years since the release of PCC 1.0, but there hasn't been any follow-on Portable C Compiler release nor is there much public-facing development activity happening...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTI5OTc

[Ibidem]

First, PCC currently is versioned 1.1.0.DEVEL.
Second, it targets GCC 4.3.1 compatability.
Third, there was talk about a release "after Christmas", but nothing's come of that yet. There's also talk about adding uclibc support.

Some interesting tidbits:
-Several of the recent commits fixed bugs found attempting to compile musl; musl does work with gcc, pcc, or clang as compiler.

-PCC can be compiled with binutils/gas or yasm (aimed at mingw support, but semi-functional on Linux/x86) for assembler; in the latter case, one might drop in mclinker and get a functional toolchain.

-For those who don't know, pcc is a direct descendent of the second C compiler from AT&T, which shipped with 7th Edition Unix; the original pcc was the first C compiler to be readily retargetted and use yacc.

-The main reason for using pcc is faster compilation with less memory needed to compile software; I've compiled musl on rather pathetic hardware with pcc, and the compile time made gcc3 look bad.


There is no C++ support; while long-term plans aim for that, code is barely started. Of course, PCC is primarily a C compiler.

[staalmannen]

I have seen several mentions about cparser/libfirm around the net lately.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cparser/

it apparently acts on top of gcc mostly but got some llvm-like designs. Not very familiar with it though.