GCC gets a new Optimizer Framework
Posted May 13, 2004 17:35 UTC (Thu) by
Per_Bothner (subscriber, #7375)
In reply to:
GCC gets a new Optimizer Framework by rjw
Parent article:
GCC gets a new Optimizer Framework
Hopefully [gcj] will be closer integrated into the mainline, and we could see things like compiling a subset of C/ C++ / fortran to JVM bytecode. AFAIK, at the moment, gcj doesn't use all that much of the same code as the other frontends.
The tree-ssa work doesn't change the "integration" of gcj at all - it's
as integrated after the tree-ssa merge as it was in 3.4.
And it isn't less "integrated" than other languages. It doesn't share
code with the C-specific frontends but neither does Fortran.
One way ssa can help gcj is that can make it easier to write
high-level optimizers with better knowledge of Java semantics.
Compiling a subset of C/ C++ / Fortran to JVM bytecode is a very hard
problem. The logical way to do it is to write a "JVM backend", and
so conceptually you'd cross-compile to the JVM. Steve Chamberlain
(then) of Transmeta contributed a PicoJava port which has been removed,
but it could used as a starting point. Whether something like this
would be useful enough to justify the work is a different matter.
I'd be much more interested in "JVM support" for gdb, so it could
debug interpreted bytecode.
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