Re: Ada to C/C++ translator needed

[kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner)]

In article <qw6iv8o9yig.fsf@gargantua.enst.fr> Samuel Tardieu <sam@ada.eu.org> writes:
>You've hit another interesting point: is there a study on how hard
>(man*year) it is to write machine-specifics files for GCC ?

There's certainly been no "study", but there is anecdotal evidence.

Unfortunately, it isn't too useful because the answer is a strong
function of who's doing it and how "peculiar" the machine in question is.

For example, I did the GCC config files for the RS/6000 in about a
month of elapsed time, working about 50% of my time on that.  Much of
that time was spent fighting IBM's assembler.

The Alpha was faster since the assembler problems didn't exist.

If you're very familiar with GCC, you can make a first cut at the
config files in a few days, at which point you can start generating
code and testing by bootstrapping it.  If the machine is relatively
conventional, there are no problem with vendor tools such as the
assembler, sufficient documentation is available, and the machine is
fast enough so compile times are not an issue, it's reasonable to
think of being able to get the compiler to bootstap in about 2-3
man-weeks of work.

But if any of the above aren't true, it can be considerably longer.
For machines that can't host GCC, you also have a harder problem in
testing it since you can just do a bootstrap.  Also, at times you have
to add facilities to GCC to support a new machine, though the last few
that have been added didn't need any such.

If you don't know GCC, the time to learn it needs to be added to this.
That can be as much as 1-3 months, depending on the person.