Re: LLVM

[Andrew Pinski]

On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 8:54 AM, David Chisnall <csdavec@swansea.ac.uk> wrote:
>  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.

No it is open source software not Free software.  In fact if you look
at the history, you will see it is copyrighted by an university still
and that is most likely not going to change so they could change the
license of newer versions to some closed source license.

>
>  - LLVM is already producing faster code than GCC.

No it does not.  It also supports less targets than GCC does which is
the most important thing for free software really.

>
>  - 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.

This I will agree with but I will also say if LLVM was 20 years old,
then it will also have the same issue as GCC.

>
>  - 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,

Actually JIT is the worst thing really.  I hate how people think JIT
is the future, it is the past and static compiling is going to be
around for many years.  JIT is a fad.

Thanks,
Andrew Pinski