Re: Motivation of tccc mainatainers (Was: Python recompile)

On Wed, 12 Mar 2025 16:52:24 +0000
bart <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:

On 12/03/2025 14:32, Michael S wrote:

On Wed, 12 Mar 2025 14:04:16 +0000
bart <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:
 

On 12/03/2025 08:53, Michael S wrote: 

On Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:43:51 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
    

On Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:58:43 +0200, Michael S wrote:
   

BTW, I think that tcc is doing damage to itself by refusal to
support ucrt variant of Microsoft's C RTL. 

>
Damaging their market share and hurting their revenues? 

>
I don't know what exactly motivates people to continue to maintain
tcc after all fun things, like, for example, writing working
compiler*, are done years ago. But it seems that extending user
base and increasing satisfaction of existing users is not totally
unimportant for this people. 

>
Tcc is a more important product than you might think. It is a
compact program of 200-300KB that can turn C source code into
binary.

 
You post does not answer the question in hand, which is "What
motivates current tcc maintainers to go on?" 

 
I thought I did. It seems a reasonably well-known compiler with some
interesting use-cases where a big product may be unsuited.
 
I'm sure there are enough users world-wide for it to be worth
maintaining, and people willing to do that.
>

That answer why maintaining tcc is a good thing for community. It does
not answer why it is good for maintainers.

There are also plenty of people interested in messing with compilers
or who want to contribute to such projects. Tcc's compiler comprises
some 36 .c and .h files; gcc is more like 85,000 files.
 
So Tcc would be simpler to work with, given 99.95% fewer files, and
to make a noticeable difference to!
 

It is unlikely that existence of such tweakers makes life of
responsible maintainers any easier. The opposite is more likely.
Now, it is possible that harder life is what they seek.