From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752267AbZDYFaO (ORCPT ); Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:30:14 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752175AbZDYF37 (ORCPT ); Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:29:59 -0400 Received: from 74-93-104-97-Washington.hfc.comcastbusiness.net ([74.93.104.97]:34139 "EHLO sunset.davemloft.net" rhost-flags-OK-FAIL-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752003AbZDYF37 (ORCPT ); Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:29:59 -0400 Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:29:52 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <20090424.222952.83381016.davem@davemloft.net> To: cl@linux.com Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [rfc] built-in native compiler for Linux? From: David Miller In-Reply-To: References: <20090422085828.GA16917@elte.hu> X-Mailer: Mew version 6.2.51 on Emacs 22.1 / Mule 5.0 (SAKAKI) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org From: Christoph Lameter Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:34:49 -0400 (EDT) > On Wed, 22 Apr 2009, Ingo Molnar wrote: > >> What i think makes sense is to build a _new_ precompiler / compiler >> / assembler / linker combo for Linux, from scratch, hosted in the >> kernel proper. >> >> A good technical basis for that would be Sparse, and it could start >> by acting as a drop-in replacement for CPP and it could feed its >> output to GCC with little changes. Sparse is small, has a very tidy >> code base and is already useful today as an extended static source >> code checker. > > A new preprocessor would be great. If we can make sparse do what CPP does > now then lets go for it. It's just too bad that we'll lose the performance gained from the fact that GCC's CPP is linked into the C compiler binary and thus doesn't have to transfer it's result over a pipe or anything like that. I really think this whole idea isn't a very smart one. I would rather have whoever would be working on a sparse backend instead be working on kernel improvements. I also think people underestimate how much work this would be.