ARM first & default LDC

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

On Tuesday, 29 December 2020 at 21:25:37 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
> I wonder what amount of funding would be needed for a first 
> version of an ARM back end for DMD.

I don't know, but my main worry is that it would be end up 80% 
dependent on Walter and delay more important stuff. Which is a 
cost that cannot be measured in terms of payment.

It really depends on 1. experience/knowledge/skills 2. backend 
familiarity 3. confidence level (release quality or test build 
quality?).

Rough guesstimate 1-2 months for something useable (for adapting 
an existing well designed backend), but that is like < 10% of the 
total work. Clearly not competitive quality, but enough to 
develop the compiler?

Maybe if someone funded an advisor so that it could be turned 
into a MSc master project to build a new non-optimizing backend 
from scratch? Sounds like a fun project and could bring new 
talent into the pool.


> More generally I don't think D is growing too slowly.

Yes, it is more difficult to manage if it grows fast (more 
demands, more fires to extinguish). The challenge is really to 
diversify the load and make sure that new features aren't started 
on before the existing feature set is solidified. If 1-2 key 
developers are overloaded (even if it is just mentoring) then 
that would be bad.

Cheers! ;-)