Official compiler

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 19 February 2016 at 09:06:28 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
wrote:
> Walter has stated previously that there have been cases of 
> lawyers coming to him about him possibly violating someone 
> else's copyright, and when he tells them that he's never even 
> looked at the source code, that satisfies them. And when the 
> GPL is involved, that' paranoia is probably a very good idea.

If FSF lawyers contact you without solid reason then it is 
newsworthy and should make headlines.  So I sincerely doubt that 
anyone from FSF has done so.

Some lawyers are trying to make a living out of acting like 
manipulative bastards, randomly fishing for a case, hoping you 
will put something in writing that they can twist. Does not mean 
they have a leg to stand on, just don't admit anything to them in 
writing.


> you're not. And while the LLVM license would definitely allow 
> LLVM code to be mixed into dmd's backend as long as the

Well, that would be silly anyway. IMO the better approach would 
be to create a high level typed IR and have a clean 
non-optimizing backend (or JIT). Then leave the optimized backend 
for LLVM.

Basically clean up the source code and introduce a clean separate 
layer between the templating system and codegen.

That way more people could work on it. Make it easy to work on 
one aspect of the compiler without understanding the whole.


> Regardless, whether Walter is willing to look at LLVM/LDC or 
> work on it at all is up to him.

Sure. It is better to have a very simple backend for an 
experimental/reference compiler.

But DMDs backend isn't simpler to understand than LLVM.

If it was dead simple and made the compiler easier to understand, 
then it would be good to have it in.