x86_64 support please!

Pragma ericanderton at yahoo.removeme.com
Fri Mar 2 07:40:36 PST 2007


Don Clugston wrote:
> Tomas Lindquist Olsen wrote:
>> Kiriakos Alexoglou wrote:
>>
>>> Please Walter add support for x86_64!
>>>
>>> I use Suse Linux 10.0 and developing in Qt and
>>> I want to try make Qt bindings for dmd.
>>>
>>> The bindings that exist for Qt right now,
>>> can all work with x86_64 architectures.
>>>
>>> In my personal opinion x86_64 support is
>>> more important than adding additional feutures to dmd.
> 
> vote--. That may be true, but do you have any idea how much work this 
> would involve?? (Hint: begin by implementing a linker from scratch).
> We'd lose Walter for a year! Has to happen someday, but I don't think 
> Walter should put any thought into it until GDC-64 is firmly established.
> 
> OTOH, I hope we get a working GDC-x64 very soon.

I agree with Don on this one.  This is the kind of project that requires a lot of dedicated man-hours to do right.  In 
other words, it's going to need some serious (fiscal) backing before it'll materialize on anything but a *geologic* 
timescale.

Disclaimer: I haven't written anything as involved as a complete compiler toolchain, nor am I a PM.  But I'd imagine 
that this is the kind of task that doesn't segment easily for sub-teams to handle (aside from the obvious 
compiler/linker split).  There's just too much vertical integration between parts to have each component developed in 
relative isolation from another: parser, parse-tree, semantic analyzer, code generator, .obj generator, optimizer, 
linker, etc.  So I'm left with the impression that the ideal team size for this may only be a handful of people at best, 
lest they begin to interfere with one another, which further compounds the time-to-delivery issue.

-- 
- EricAnderton at yahoo



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