RE: [avr-gcc-list] Re: AVR LLVM backend?

[Weddington, Eric]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: 
> address@hidden 
> [mailto:address@hidden
> org] On Behalf Of John Regehr
> Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 11:16 PM
> To: Dave N6NZ
> Cc: avr-gcc-list
> Subject: Re: [avr-gcc-list] Re: AVR LLVM backend?
> 
> > of compiler geeks hanging around looking for an interesting 
> challenge.  Maybe 
> > we can bait (did I say that?) one of those folks into 
> adopting the AVR, 
> > simply because it is an intellectually interesting puzzle.
> 
> The LLVM people have a wish list here:
> 
>    http://llvm.org/OpenProjects.html

That seems to be a list of generic projects, ones that cover all of llvm.


> would be nice to get the AVR backend added to this.  Perhaps a bit of 
> support could be gotten from Google's summer of code?
> 
>    http://code.google.com/soc/2008/
> 
> They have had LLVM projects before it looks like.

Unfortunately, open source projects generally don't work like this. You cannot 
easily cajole, bribe, or somehow incentivize someone to do work for you, like 
adding an AVR port. It is best if those who are the most interested are the 
ones who do the work. They have the most motivation. Realize that everyone is 
busy. Open source projects are all lacking in resources. It is better to get 
off your duff and volunteer to do *something*, *anything* to help. This 
includes even helping the current GCC-based toolchain.



> Or maybe Eric could make a bit of Atmel support materialize?  
> It could be pretty cheap :).

"Atmel support" and "cheap" are two different concepts that should not always 
be lumped together. :-)
If I work on it, it is under the auspices of Atmel. After an initial port, I 
would need to see some provable advantages to continue using LLVM over GCC such 
as, easier maintenance overhead, better optimizations (and hence smaller code 
size), etc.

 
> If the backend does materialize, I volunteer to beat the crap 
> out of it 
> with my random tester!

Good! ;-)

Eric