From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,94a2b19e68586a6 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,9adfbb907494972e X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,9adfbb907494972e X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) Subject: Re: Ada to C/C++ translator needed Date: 1996/10/07 Message-ID: <53anuv$meh@news.nyu.edu>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 187317854 references: <536eid$gv2@news.ccit.arizona.edu> organization: New York University Ultracomputer Research Lab newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++ Date: 1996-10-07T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article Samuel Tardieu 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.