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Comment by profquail

12 years ago

Why not write the code in C# (for example) and extract it to $SYSTEM_PROGRAMMING_LANGUAGE? It wouldn't be much different than what Xamarin are doing now for creating iOS and Android apps with C#.

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profquail

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pbsd  12 years ago

Using C as an output language, backed by guarantees at the higher level, could certainly work. I believe ATS [1] works this way, and can even avoid garbage collection altogether if desired. I understand it is not an easy language, though.

Nimrod [2] also generates C, but as I understand it garbage collection is unavoidable.

[1] http://www.ats-lang.org/

[2] http://nimrod-lang.org/

  • comex  12 years ago

    This is one reason I'd like to see the removed LLVM C backend brought back and modernized, with Rust as the source language. Rust is safe, has no mandatory garbage collector, and has a much lower impedance mismatch with C or C++ than most higher level languages, so it should work well for libraries that are expected to integrate with C code.

    • andrewaylett  12 years ago

      I'm not clear why you'd want to compile your rust down to C, only to then compile that C again? Surely you're better off with a single compiler invocation, and taking rust straight to object code?

      I know that historically it's been easier to write a code generator than a compiler backend, but with LLVM you get the backend just as cheaply as the code gen.

      1 reply →

est  12 years ago

Because if you write that in C#, you have to bundle 54MB common runtime and GC withit.

  • profquail  12 years ago

    Did you actually read my entire comment, or did you just see "C#" and post a knee-jerk reaction? If you extract code from C# to C, you don't need a GC or any of the .NET class libraries -- you'd just have a standalone C file to use like any other.

    • est  12 years ago

      > If you extract code from C# to C, you don't need a GC or any of the .NET class libraries

      The problem is, you do need them. There's no 1:1 C# -> C extraction. You have to extract at least some part of the CLR along with.

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