Puzzle 8-10-08 (answer)

[Koroskin Denis]

On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:45:15 +0400, bearophile <bearophileHUGS at lycos.com>  
wrote:

> Koroskin Denis:
>> Yes, it is. And Walter writes it on his own :(
>
> I think there can be ways to reduce such complexity (and add a  
> compile-time GC).
>
> I think in a short time LLVM will become good enough as backend for D  
> (what are the practical problems left that make this adoption possible?  
> In my benchmarks (all the Shootout C benchmarks) LLMV isn't efficient as  
> GCC yet, but it's probably already more efficient than the backend of  
> DMD so that's not a problem, and it's open source), what I mean it can  
> become the backend for the official D compiler developed by Walter (and  
> the D community). (side question: can the front-end for LLMV be written  
> in D? I hope so).
>
> Does Walter oppose moving to develop with this back-end? I think it will  
> lead to solve some of the main current problems in the D development  
> process (such switch can be aligned to a switch to phobos+tango too).
>
> Bye,
> bearophile

Nice idea. IIRC, Walter isn't going to replace its own backend to (or even  
look at) GCC because of the GPL license. However, LLVM has a BSD-like  
license and that could be an option.

It still lacks some features, but it evolves *daily* unlike DMD backend.  
For example, chances are we won't ever get a native x86_64 codegen from DM  
backend, but we will get it with LLVM eventually (very soon, hopefully).