Re: ISO: The Eiffel OO programming language and IDE, on VMS

Chris Townley <news@cct-net.co.uk> wrote:

On 29/03/2025 18:19, Waldek Hebisch wrote:

Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-earth.ufp> wrote:

On 2025-03-27, Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:

>
or:
- people use a different backend than LLVM (GCC, custom, whatever)
>

>
If anyone knows of a serious backend code generator other than LLVM
or GCC, please feel free to point me at it. :-)
>
Simon.
>
PS: And no Bill, the Amsterdam Compiler Kit does not apply. :-)

 
Depends what you consider serious (and what "backend" means).
There is bunch of compilers that use their own backend,
for example optimized Ocaml or SBCL Lisp.  If you aim at
highest possible speed, regardless of language, then they
can not compete.  If you look at native performance for
relevant languages, then they are top performers (there are
Lisp compilers which generate code via translation to C,
resulting speed is lower than obtained using SBCL).
 
Note that context was porting languages, "classic"
languages are covered by VSI, so relevant things are
backends for more exotic languages.  There was recent
trend to adopt LLVM in such cases, and Julia seem to
be prominent example of language dependent on LLVM.
But more popular approach seem to be via custom
backend or via C.  For example Haskell folks some time
ago said that LLVM does not really give them advantages
compared to going via C, and C way is easier.
 

 
Isn't that what GNAT does for Ada?

I am not sure what you wanted to say.  GNAT is a native
compiler using GCC backend.  There were some talk about
interfacing it to LLVM, but I am not aware of anything
working in this direction.  GNAT does _not_ generate
C, it interfaces with the backend using constructs not
available in C.

--
                              Waldek Hebisch