{"id":339,"date":"2004-01-07T02:09:00","date_gmt":"2004-01-07T07:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/2004\/01\/07\/gcc-has-got-competition\/"},"modified":"2007-04-02T15:25:07","modified_gmt":"2007-04-02T20:25:07","slug":"gcc-has-got-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/2004\/01\/07\/gcc-has-got-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"GCC has got competition?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n When it comes to Open Source development GCC is the king in the compiler area (unless you work with some other language…. and even then…). Awhile ago I found lcc<\/a> however it’s license is restritive if you want to develop commercial software. This I think has prevented its wider adoption.\n<\/p>\n

\nHowever, once of the places I leave my virtual self on told me about TenDRA<\/a>. Best of all it looks like it has a much more liberal license than GCC.\n<\/p>\n

\n Here’s an announcement from the Mailing List\n<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

TenDRA is a C\/C++ compiler developed initially in the early 1990s
\nby the Defense Evaluation and Research Agency in the United Kingdom.
\nThe TenDRA compiler addressed code portability issues in the days just
\nprior to the creation of the first ANSI C standards (hereafter, “the
\nage of darkness”). TenDRA uses Architecture-Neutral Distribution
\nFormat (ANDF) as the basis for an IR as well as a distribution format.<\/p>\n

The original DRA code is licensed under the Crown License, which
\nreads like an upper class version of the BSD license. (God save the
\nQueen!) I’m not that interested in this part of things; I just know
\nit’s bsdl. Further information about source code licensing can be
\nobtained by trolling slashdot.<\/p>\n

TenDRA’s strengths include:<\/p>\n

— An amazing static checker; vastly superior to gcc, even in the
\n old 4.1.2 version code (nearly 9 years old in parts and
\n untouched until recently).<\/p>\n

— Incredible flexibility in semantic analysis, allowing users to
\n toggle individual language rules, conventions, and
\n preferences. Many of the pragmas in tendra anticipated some
\n c99 changes.<\/p>\n

— Language agnosticism; producers can be made for any language,
\n and ANDF tokens created as needed. Recently .NET picked up
\n this idea. The attempts by Gough and other .NET architects to
\n distinguish the two really just serve to underscore the
\n relation, in my admittedly biased opinion.<\/p>\n

— A very nice set of tools, some serving as stand-alone crown\/bsd
\n licensed replacements for GNU tools. Check out sid in
\n particular.
\n<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\n Definitely sounds interesting! Although it seems the TenDRA project has a sub-fork which I’m still reading and trying to understand but hopefully it leads to faster progress.\n<\/p>\n

\n The original branch of TenDRA<\/a>
\n
\n New branch focusing on ANDF technology<\/a>
\n
\n What the heck is ANDF?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to Open Source development GCC is the king in the compiler area (unless you work with some other language…. and even then…). Awhile ago I found lcc however it’s license is restritive if you want to develop commercial software. This I think has prevented its wider adoption. However, once of the places […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":703,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1029,260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-source","category-tech"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}