Re: LLVM

[David Chisnall]

On 29 Feb 2008, at 16:46, Pete French wrote:

> > Do you really think that the LLVM license is a good license for our
> > compiler / runtime language library ? ;-)
>
> Lisence wars are never very productive and the UNIX/BSD vs the Linux/ 
> GNU
> style has been runnign for years. The thing is, wouldn't it be nice to
> have it so GNUstep worked with both ? I really like the sound of this
> compiler (it's a new toy if nothing else) and I also like the sound of
> the new runtime. But that doesn't mean a switch from GCC surely ?  
> Choice
> is a good thing...
>
> Or to put it another way, I don't think we should be including a  
> compiler
> or runtime *at* *all* as part of GNustep - it should be "choose your
> Objective-C compiler" as then it gets on with it. Possibly easier
> said than done though :-)


I composed a long reply to Nicola's email, but this makes my point far  
better than I did.  A few things:

- LLVM is Free Software.

- LLVM is already producing faster code than GCC.

- LLVM code is clean enough that I can go from first looking at it to  
submitting patches in a few days, while the GCC code is indecipherable  
to anyone not already intimately familiar with it.

- LLVM has a JIT mode which will (when combined with a runtime library  
like mine - and unlike the Apple and GNU ones - which allows safe  
lookup caching) allow dynamic inlining,

Not supporting LLVM would, in my view, be a mistake.  I am obviously  
horrendously biassed when it comes to supporting my runtime (if I  
didn't think supporting it was a good idea, I wouldn't have written it  
in the first place).

GNUstep already includes code to support the NeXT runtime, which isn't  
Free Software at all.  Supporting a compiler that is seems like a  
logical thing to do.  With OS X 10.6, people are likely to be writing  
Cocoa programs with LLVM.  If we want them to port their code to  
GNUstep, then supporting their compiler seems like a sensible thing to  
do, ignoring some of the shiny things that LLVM would let us do (OS  
and architecture agnostic .app bundles spring to mind).

David