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Smaller C compiler (Announce)

posted by alexfru, USA, 15.06.2016, 09:11

> > > I mention this only because they mention fuzz testing with tools like
> > > Csmith, C-Reduce, Opt-fuzz, etc.
> > >
> > > So maybe those tools could help you, too?
> >
> > I know most of the issues and I do have a bunch of tests ...
> > So, either nobody's using the project,
>
> Sadly, some people have no imagination, certainly regarding DOS.
My compiler targets Windows, Linux and RetroBSD as well, so, it's either the compiler or all four OSes. :)

> > or there aren't that many problems in it if people aren't reporting
> them.
>
> Right, I didn't see any obvious errors. But my usage was far from expert
> anyways. Still, I've seen much worse compilers.
>
> > So, it looks like I should be OK w.r.t. bugs.
>
> Yes, I think you've already ironed out most obvious bugs. I just felt like
> mentioning it in the off chance that it would help iron out some more
> hidden cases (since no software is ever totally bug-free).
>
> > What I really (still!) need is a preprocessor. I like a lot the one from
> > Plan9/LCC because it's complete, proven, small and even compiles as-is
> (the
> > LCC variant) with Smaller C. I do not like its license, however. Others
> are
> > either big or bad (rather incomplete, buggy, using functions that aren't
> in
> > the C standard).
>
> Isn't ancient GCC 2.7's CPP fairly small? I imagine that would be
> (relatively) easy to port.
I haven't seen it, but I have doubts.

> As for Plan9 license, what is wrong with it? AFAIK, it has changed several
> times, so it should be okay. Heck, I think they even dual-licensed to GPL
> recently.
>
> Wikipedia says this:
>
> > Starting with the release of Fourth edition on April 2002,
> > the full source code of Plan 9 from Bell Labs was freely
> > available under Lucent Public License 1.02, which is considered
> > to be open source license by the Open Source Initiative (OSI),
> > free software license by the Free Software Foundation, and it
> > passes the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
> >
> > In February 2014, the University of California, Berkeley, has
> > been authorized by the current Plan 9 copyright holder ?
> > Alcatel-Lucent ? to release all Plan 9 software previously
> > governed by the Lucent Public License, Version 1.02 under the
> > GNU General Public License, Version 2.
I didn't know about that. I have plan9.iso.bz2 downloaded in January 2015 from Lucent. It contains some files dated May 2014 (May > February!) and its only mention of GPL is with respect to printer fonts. Most of the thing is under Lucent Public License, Version 1.02 in there.

> You mention Plan9/LCC, but isn't LCC different? Plan9 has its own compiler.
The compiler proper is different. But the LCC authors borrowed the preprocessor from Plan9 and made a few relatively small changes (mostly cleaned it up and made ANSI C). In their LCC book they don't even describe the preprocessor, only mention its existence.

> Though LCC does allegedly use dmr's CPP (or so I thought). Yeah, LCC
> license sucks.
I wonder if the LCC guys would agree to explicitly license their version of the preprocessor as GPL as well (they don't have to, but it would be nice = less work for me or for someone else adapting the code again).

> I would even suggest (T)ACK, but I don't see a separate CPP binary there.
There was something I didn't like about ACK.

> But it's BSD-ish and relatively simple. Maybe (BSD-ish) PCC? Theirs seems
> fairly small.
It is. We use it in RetroBSD, but it has a few odd problems w.r.t. memory management / memory use. It also makes use of lex/yacc/whatever, which I'm not happy about either.

> Or even BCC/Dev86? Meh, dunno.
I wouldn't go there.

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