Okay, somebody mentioned the Pastel compiler (Pascal-ish, compiled itself) that was the original basis for RMS' hacking. He wrote his own C frontend and that later became GCC proper.
It's very hard to find info on this, so I'm pasting here my recent findings for ya. (Note that I know less than probably anybody about this. I'm no knowledgeable insider or anything!) In particular, GCC's history and Wikipedia seem to omit mention of most of this.
Somebody should also probably e-mail RMS to ask if he still has a copy of the sources around somewhere (interesting to me, at least, and I'm just vaguely curious!).
"Jeff Broughton, then Amber project leader, implemented two extended Pascal compilers. The extended language was named Pastel (an off-color Pascal). A complete compiler targeted to the S-1 architecture was completed in several months. However, the first version of the compiler, which was implemented in slightly more than a weekend, produced PL/1 as its output! This was done to allow the continued use of Multics, which had no Pascal compiler, as the development site for Amber. At that point the project had a couple of man-years of code written in PL/1. The conversion of all PL/1 code to Pastel was accomplished in about 3 man months. (1998 historical note: at one point in the project Richard Stallman visited, and had the Pastel compiler explained to him. He left with a copy of the source, and used it to produce the Gnu C compiler. Most of the techniques that gave the Gnu C compiler its reputation for good code generation came from the Amber Pastel compiler.)"
http://www.mit.edu/~cbf/thesis.htm http://killian.com/earl/ http://www.lbl.gov/cs/CSnews/CSnews073109a.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PathScale
Rugxulo wrote:
Okay, somebody mentioned the Pastel compiler (Pascal-ish, compiled itself) that was the original basis for RMS' hacking. He wrote his own C frontend and that later became GCC proper.
http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/History (first Google hit for "Pastel compiler", BTW) says different:
: Hoping to avoid the need to write the whole compiler myself, I obtained the : source code for the Pastel compiler, which was a multi-platform compiler : developed at Lawrence Livermore Lab. It supported, and was written in, : an extended version of Pascal, designed to be a system-programming : language. I added a C front end, and began porting it to the Motorola : 68000 computer. But I had to give that up when I discovered that the : compiler needed many megabytes of stack space, and the available 68000 : Unix system would only allow 64k. : : I then realized that the Pastel compiler functioned by parsing the entire : input file into a syntax tree, converting the whole syntax tree into a chain : of "instructions", and then generating the whole output file, without ever : freeing any storage. At this point, I concluded I would have to write a new : compiler from scratch. That new compiler is now known as GCC; none of the : Pastel compiler is used in it, but I managed to adapt and use the C front : end that I had written.
Somebody should also probably e-mail RMS to ask if he still has a copy of the sources around somewhere (interesting to me, at least, and I'm just vaguely curious!).
This somebody could be you.
Frank
Hi,
On 8/3/10, Frank Heckenbach ih8mj@fjf.gnu.de wrote:
Rugxulo wrote:
Okay, somebody mentioned the Pastel compiler (Pascal-ish, compiled itself) that was the original basis for RMS' hacking. He wrote his own C frontend and that later became GCC proper.
http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/History (first Google hit for "Pastel compiler", BTW) says different:
Already read that, which is where I learned about the "wrote own frontend part, used for GCC". Both sound the same to me!
But notice that there is no mention of Amber OS or Jeff Broughton? That's what I meant, it wasn't easy to find out who wrote Pastel or when it was originally written. Surely I can't be the only one interested after all these years??
Somebody should also probably e-mail RMS to ask if he still has a copy of the sources around somewhere (interesting to me, at least, and I'm just vaguely curious!).
This somebody could be you.
Heh, I knew you'd say that. Alright, fine fine, I'll do it.
Hi again,
On 8/4/10, Rugxulo rugxulo@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/3/10, Frank Heckenbach ih8mj@fjf.gnu.de wrote:
Rugxulo wrote:
Somebody should also probably e-mail RMS to ask if he still has a copy of the sources around somewhere (interesting to me, at least, and I'm just vaguely curious!).
This somebody could be you.
Heh, I knew you'd say that. Alright, fine fine, I'll do it.
Here's what RMS says (no surprise, sadly):
"I don't know where to find Pastel sources now."
-
Frank Heckenbach -
Rugxulo