Re: question about linker

On 10/12/2024 16:16, David Brown wrote:

On 10/12/2024 14:56, bart wrote:

On 07/12/2024 16:06, David Brown wrote:

On 06/12/2024 20:20, Bart wrote:

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If your task to get from A to B was split into two, you'd be happy to do the first part by a fast car, then complete the rest of it on a horse and cart, for no reason at all?
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The comparison was between C to object code (with a real compiler) and from X to C and then to the object code (using a real compiler).  If your beliefs were true that gcc (and other proper C compilers) are incredibly slow, why would it make any difference if someone is starting from X or starting from C?  In both cases, compilation would take a long time - C compilation speed is neither more nor less important whether you are programming in X or C.

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You don't appear to get it.

 No, /you/ don't get it.  I did not say that people using language X don't care about the speed of C compilation.  I said it doesn't matter any more or any less than for people writing C.
 

If you are writing C by hand, then people like you would want to use a more powerful, and therefore slower, compiler, that will analyse that C. It can also take care of the many shortcomings in the language.
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But if the C has been machine-generated, that analysis is no longer relevant. Then you may just want the fastest and simplest conversion.
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 As I said before, the analysis is needed for good optimisation -

And as I said before, optimisation is very often not needed.

generating static error checking takes very little extra time when you are optimising.  And often people using C as an intermediary language want optimisation of the C code.

That's a benefit of it yes, but there's also a cost.
It depends a lot on how everything works. But if I take an old project of mine that uses a C transpiler, and apply it to compiler projects that I won't bore you with, I get these timings:
    C compiler:  Overall  (C compilation) Runtime
    cc           0.17       0.08           1.29   secs
    tcc          0.27       0.18           1.56
    gcc-O0       2.63       2.54           1.34
    gcc-O2      12.6       11.7            0.8
    gcc-O3      16.8       15.9            0.8
The intermediate C is one file. Transpiling to that C takes 0.09 seconds in all cases. 'cc' is my newest C compiler (here beating tcc on 'busy' generated code, but that is not typical).
The runtime is that of running on my largest test input, an extreme test. Most inputs are a fraction of the size but finish too quickly to measure easily.
For comparisons, the timings for my normal compiler, going straight to EXE and not via C, are:
    mm           0.9       ----            1.03
Using tcc-compiled intermediate C would still give a reasonable development experience. Using even gcc-O0 100s of times a day would be very annoying, for zero benefit.