A little humor from a long time ML lurker...
Via C3-2 Nehemiah 1GHz 512MB ddr
$ ../gcc-4.0.0/configure --prefix=/home/jason/local/gcc-400 --enable-shared \
--enable-threads=posix --disable-checking --enable-long-long --enable-__cxa_atexit \ --enable-clocale=gnu --disable-libunwind-exceptions --enable-languages=c --with-system-zlib
$ time make bootstrap ... 3860.71user 245.24system 1:10:05elapsed 97%CPU 0inputs+0outputs (6698major+12862842minor)pagefaults 0swaps
$ strip gcc ; upx -9 gcc ; ls -l gcc -rwxr-xr-x 1 jason jason 42672 May 5 23:07 gcc
So the bootstrap process generates a useful 10 bytes/second. ;-)
But seriously, GCC and various language standards have kept up with modern hardware.
If someone takes a GCC release and hacks up a release to run on 50MHz boxes from years
gone by, that's great, but I think the main GCC devs shouldn't worry about it because
GCC is more about flexibility and extensibility than slim and trim I'd say. Perhaps there
should be an "embedded GCC" team that focuses on a separate light-weight C/C++ project.
Many thanks for GCC! -Jason, back to lurking.