Re: DragonEgg has been revived

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

"Dan'l Miller" <optikos@verizon.net> writes:

> shark8 wrote:
>> What I would like to see is an Ada compiler that can generate code
>> for a wide range of targets ••without •any• GPL restrictions on the
>> generated code••.
>
> Simon Wright wrote:
>> Pretty sure that's called GCC.
>
> No, Simon, both Chris Moore and I have both shown that the Eligible
> Compilation Process prohibits certain categories of manipulations of
> the generated code, both code-in-the-form-of-true-IR and
> code-in-the-form-of-machine-code-lifted-back-to-IR-by-e.g.-McSema.  We
> are attacking your ignoring the “any” there in shark8's laudable
> expectation/goal.

One last time, when you say "Eligible Compilation Process" you are using
a phrase contained in the GCC Runtime Library Exception, not one
contained in GPLv3.

So all this argument is about code that is originally covered by the
Exception, which includes libgcc and the full version of the Ada RTS
(and libgfortran, ...).

It seems likely that LLVM doesn't use libgcc (on macOS, it uses
libSystem, as does GCC itself, via symlinks).

Which leaves (for us) the Ada RTS.

Oh, and by the way, the Exception does not prohibit using a
GPL-compatible plugin or whatever. The McSema problem (I couldn't see,
at first glance, any discussion of a problem?) would seem to be that it
relies on a proprietary tool (IDA?).