ron is suggesting is that with minimal effort the plan 9 kernel could be made to compile using gcc instead of the standard plan 9 compilers. he's right.
erik's point is that once you have a kernel up, you still need to give it executables to run. this either requires porting the standard compilers to the target machine or somehow making the entire source tree compile under gcc, which would require significantly more effort than the kernel. he's also right. it all depends on what you want from plan 9. for me, the fleet plan 9 compilers save me so much time and make me so much more productive compared to waiting on gcc that on balance i'd rather spend the time to port the compiler than switch to gcc. ron is already using gcc to generate binaries to run on plan 9, though, and his use of plan 9 depends much more heavily on the "plays well with networks" aspect than it does on the fast compilation. and maybe there's no one to write the new compiler. there, using gcc might make sense. russ
