Re: [Gcl-devel] GCL as gcc front end?

[Mike Thomas]

Hi Camm.

> [2] (IMHO) gcc's backend was never really designed with non-C-like
>     languages in mind.  The amount of work it took to get Ada to use
>     the gcc backend was pretty lengthy (several man-years of effort?).
>     And Ada is closer to C, semantically, than CL is...

If the choice of back end does not have to be GCC, it might be worthwhile
finding out about those used by SML of New Jersey and the Glasgow Haskell
Compiler, both of which are functional programming languages (although very
different to Common Lisp).  Neither of those back ends has the breadth of
potential targets (a couple each I believe) that GCL or GCC currently has.

Having said that, I suspect you might as well write a completely new
compiler within one of those frameworks, at which point you might as well
use Haskell or SML instead either being, (as everyone knows of course,
friendly grin fixed to face) superior languages to Common Lisp.

Cheers

Mike Thomas.