Alternative compiler toolchain ?

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Jul 01), Jean-Marc Lienher said:
> After a (too?) quick look at the FreeBSD source code, I've seen that
> the GNU compiler toolchain was used to compile the kernel and other
> part of the OS.
> 
> I would like to know if there is another compiler toolchain (C
> compiler, assembler and linker) which is able to build the i386
> FreeBSD and which is released under the BSD, MIT or any other
> non-viral license ?

Luckily gcc's license doesn't apply to the executables it generates :)
 
> I've found some other compilers on the web:
> http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/tcc/  (LGPL)

tcc is very fast, probably has the most modern C parser of the lot, and
might even be able to build world except that the shared binaries it
generates aren't able to be loaded by our rtld.  It looks like tcc only
emits the bare minimum to get Linux to run the executable, and I don't
know enough about the ELF format to fill in the blanks.

> http://www.cs.princeton.edu/software/lcc/ (Free for personal use)
> http://tack.sourceforge.net/ (BSD)
> 
> The last one, ACK (the Minix compiler), is released under a
> good license. Does somebody have ever tried to compile FreeBSD
> with it ?

ACK can't generate executables for any modern system except Solaris, so
it would have to have a lot of work done on it to be useful.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson at allantgroup.com