Quote:
Originally Posted by thirdm
It's not like gcc or Clang can't still compile C, so what does OpenBSD care if either is implemented in C++?
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Well, it does make a difference to the developers.
Maintainability is important, and C++ brings certain negative associations to mind, at least in some people.
It’s a shame that PCC is dead, since it has some promise. Initially it was pushed as a compiler that is easy to port to new architectures, but in the end nobody stepped up to do the work beyond i386. Still, it’s not the first time OpenBSD has considered a compiler and dropped it. Theo even considered the Plan 9 compiler once, but dropped that idea
for licensing reasons.
I foresee the BSD world, including OpenBSD, moving (eventually) to clang. A compiler written in C++, with a very large codebase that takes a long time to compile and uses up all my diskspace when building itself with debug symbols doesn’t seem ideal to me—but I can’t deny how useful I’ve found clang in real‐world usage.
Personally, I find
libFirm/
cparser an interesting lightweight compiler project, although the fact that it’s GPL is somewhat irritating.