Post by B. KowarschPost by Norayr ChilingarianGM2 has a community. It is the only compiler which implements whole
(or almost whole) ISO library set.
That last bit is not correct. There are several other compilers who
support ISO including the ISO library: Mod51, p1, XDS, possibly
TopSpeed and MaX too. In fact, IIRC, p1 is the only compiler that
supports the full ISO standard (IS 10514-1/2/3).
OK.
However, gm2 has a community. A lot of testers, and if you sunscribe
to mailing list, you will see how many fixes and tests being done.
Overall, work on gm2 is very active.
Post by B. KowarschYou may also want to consider that not everybody considers ISO a must-
have feature. Opinions are divided.
OK
Post by B. KowarschPost by Norayr ChilingarianIt [=>GCC] has nice architecture, where everybody can add it's own backend cpu
or frontend language.
Have you have ever tried to do that yourself. I have never come across
any GCC front-end maintainer who would characterise GCC to have a
"nice" architecture. Many maintainers curse it. Even the most loyal
GCC hackers will generally conceit that there is a lot of cruft in
GCC.
I personally prefer independent compiler. And once, when I was doing
mine, I described why I prefer to not use gcc, but write codegenerator
form scratch.
However,
a) - I consider gcc as a nice solution. Once you write a frontend, you
have the language on all (or almost all) supported architectures.
Of course it needs testing. And gm2 has a community which helps a lot.
b) - Let's not forget, that tack is not an independent compiler
itself. It is a compiler with pretty old architecture, not necessarily
best intermeddiate representation (virtual cpu opcodes versus trees in
gcc), and it is written in C.
Besides, gm2 frontend is written in Modula-2.
Post by B. KowarschThe fact that GNU Modula-2 is still reliant on an older version of GCC
is testament to the difficulties involved to keeping front-ends
synchronised with the code-base.
Gaius do a great job and as far as I see in mailing list, he manage to
sync compiler with latest gcc versions.
Post by B. KowarschThat is not to say that GNU Modula-2 hasn't made laudable progress. To
the contrary, the difficulties involved in maintaining a GCC front-end
make Gaius' achievements all the more impressive.
Yep.
Post by B. KowarschPost by Norayr ChilingarianAnd it is very easy to install because there is an apt repo and you
only need to drop a line in /etc/apt/sources.list and apt-get update;
apt-get install gm2 :)
To be fair, it should be noted that the compiler is still under
development. If you need to build it yourself, then it is not as
simple and in fact the build may fail altogether.
To be fair, I consider gm2 which is "in development" more stable, than
ack's modula-2 frontend.
It also has more featers, supports most language dialects, including
PIM's, able to compile Ulm libraries set, Logitech libraries set.
I would describe "ack" as a hobby/toy compiler compared to gm2/gcc
solution.
Besides, I appreciate work which David does.
I think that the world with one gcc and without mocka, tack, would be
gray.
Of course it is better to have *different* compilers, and different
implementations.
And people are different, they think different. That's why we have zoo
of languages, and zoo of compiler implementations.
That's nice :)
I was wondering why author of the first post in the thread does not
appreciate gm2, because I consider gm2 much better solution compared
to tack. If we keep in mind development for the modern computers.
Besides, he seem to be interested in microcontroller development, and
I think, that on the base of gm2 + avr libraries it is possible to
build a great alternative to the mainstream c based development.
However, I do not consider neither ack nor gm2 as perfect
implementation.
I personally would like to see modula-2 compiler which is gcc/ack/
other infrastructure independent. Like fpc team did.