LLVM

[Chad J]

Craig Black wrote:
> LLVM (http://llvm.org/) is a backend for compilers.  It is portable to many 
> platforms, well documened, and actively developed.  It seems that they are 
> making great progress with it.
> 
> A crazy idea.  Has anyone considered using LLVM with D's front end?  I know 
> Walter has his own back end, but it's seems hard for one guy to maintain 
> both a front and back end, and do a good job at both.  Even a programming 
> god like Walter.  If we had the LLVM team actively developing and innovating 
> the back end, then Walter could focus on innovating the front end and the D 
> language.  Just a thought.
> 
> -Craig 
> 
> 

Hmmm... looks like they are working on an ARM backend.  This could be 
nice.  If they get that ARM backend done by say, summer of next year, 
and the D front-end is plugged in, then I might be willing to take a 
crack at making ARM work on that one in addition to GDC.  Then I could 
decide which one is nicer to work with and focus on that.  Kind of a 
longshot though (they'd need wince support too).

Admittedly the current arm-wince-pe GDC I put together has some uh 
...annoyances...   and I've no idea how to solve them.

Now I wonder, is Walter really maintaining the backend much?  I thought 
that part of dmd was pretty solid already and he is just focusing on the 
front-end and other D affairs.

What would impress me is if the main development of D would occur on 
this LLVM compiler, or at least be readily portable to it within hours 
or a few days (this assumes LLVM is a good quality backend that Walter 
wouldn't mind switching to).  The utility I am looking for there is 
having a bleeding-edge D compiler that is also very retargetable, and 
doesn't require big man-hours to be maintained as it seems gdc does. 
DMD is great on windows, but it is fairly useless on my pda since, well, 
it doesn't even generate code for that at all!