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Comment by transpute

1 year ago

LLVM would not be easily replaced, https://chriscummins.cc/2019/llvm-cost/

> 1.2k developers have produced a 6.9M line code base with an estimated price tag of $530M.

Although it's true that replacing LLVM like-for-like would indeed be expensive, I feel like you missed GP's point. To make the easier to debug, what you want is to replace LLVM with something simple, like a plain interpreter. And writing one (or adapting one) would be nothing like this cost.

  • Any precedent example for an LLVM-hosted language? There are benefits from being on the same toolchain as popular languages.

    • Rust is experimenting with a codegen tool called cranelift which powers wasmtime. The plan is to use it for debug builds. There is also a backend implementation in the works using gcc jit and a dotnet backend as well

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that's a fallacy that was ignored when starting llvm and looking at the already existing gcc.