ARM first & default LDC

[Walter Bright]

On 12/30/2020 6:20 PM, Max Haughton wrote:
> On Thursday, 31 December 2020 at 01:11:10 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> - it would probably be easier to do a basic retargetable code generator from 
>>> scratch
>>
>> Everyone thinks that. But not a chance. The last 1% will take 500% of the 
>> time, and you'll be chasing bugs for years that the old one already solved.
> 
> 
> That was specifically referring to properly adding ARM support rather than 
> replacing the backend for the sake of it. I'm not in any way under the 
> impression that either would be easy.

Sorry I misunderstood you.

The difficulty is apparent in that most compiler writers write a front end and 
use someone else's back end, write a simple interpreter, or generate C code.

Me, I've always enjoyed the challenge of a back end.