Re: Suggested method for returning a string from a C program?

On Sun, 23 Mar 2025 11:25:14 +0000
bart <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:

On 23/03/2025 08:50, Michael S wrote:

On Sun, 23 Mar 2025 01:34:54 +0000
bart <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:
 

>
It's strange: in one part of the computing world, the speed of
building software is a very big deal. All sorts of efforts are
going on to deal with it. Compilation speed for developers is
always an issue. There is a general movement away from LLVM-based
backends /because/ it is so slow.
 

 
What "general movement" are you talking about?
I can't recollect any new* language for general-purpose computers
that is used by more than dozen* persons which is not based on LLVM
back end. Despite its undeniable slowness. 

 
There's Rust + Cranelift:
 
"The goal of this project is to create an alternative codegen backend
for the rust compiler based on Cranelift. This has the potential to
improve compilation times in debug mode."
 

It looks like a schism. Since Rust is sort of religious movement,
schisms are inevitable part of it.

There's Go which was never based on LLVM:
 
"At the beginning of the project we considered using LLVM for gc but
decided it was too large and slow to meet our performance goals."
 
('gc' is 'Go Compiler'. Maybe Go is older than 15 years?

Yes, it is. 17+.

Still, LLVM
seems to have been around

In 2007 LLVM was formally 7 y.o. but until 2005 it was a tiny project
with very little (or none?) payed workforce. I can't say it with
certainty, but it seems that LLVM didn't really become usable until
2008-2009.

and was thought to be slow then.)
 

gollvm certainly exists and works.
Users that want to use go on something other than very few platforms
supported by Google's "self hosted" implementation appear to have two
main choices: gogcc and gollvm. I don't know which is chosen more often.

And there's Zig:
 

Isn't current distribution of Zig based on LLVM?
Just wondering, the chance that Zig will fly by now approaches zero.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39154513
 
There are other's comments:
 
"LLVM used to be hailed as a great thing, but with language projects
such as Rust, Zig and others complaining it's bad and slow and
they're moving away from it – how bad is LLVM really?"
 
Here's is a random quote from Reddit:
 
"2 minutes is really good for a full build. 2 minutes is pretty bad
for a one line change.
 
I also quit my job recently because of their terrible infrastructure.
All home-grown of course. A horrible mess of Python, C++ and Make.
 
So demotivating. And nobody except me cared."
 
TBH, for me 2 minutes would be really terrible even for a full build.
So would 2 seconds! (How big was this executable?)