Portable code generation (was: Reference ports, etc...)
Ron Guilmette
rfg at NCD.COM
Sun Jan 20 19:52:11 AEST 1991
In article <5291 at auspex.auspex.com> guy at auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes:
>>I believe that's what Sun and AT&T thought, but I can imagine
>>existing COFF-producing retargetable code generators and other such
>>tools which could be ported to SPARC much more easily if the supplier
>>did not have to change object formats at the same time.
>
>That's one nice thing about having your compilers generate assembler
>code rather than object code - they don't have to know quite so much
>about object-file formats, because they leave that knowledge up to the
>assembler....
Yes, but unfortunately they *do* still have to know quite a bit about
the type of *debugging information* required by the target system.
For example, on V.4, your compilers don't have to be terribly ELF-smart
but it does help if they are DWARF-smart. Making them so can be quite
time consuming. Take it from me.
--
// Ron Guilmette - C++ Entomologist
// Internet: rfg at ncd.com uucp: ...uunet!lupine!rfg
// Motto: If it sticks, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
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