On Sun, 21 Sep 2008, NightStrike wrote: > On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 12:36 PM, Brian Dessent <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Simon Hill wrote: > > > >> http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gccint/index.html. (Of course I was > >> horrified to see it's not written in C++, and it's loaded with macros > >> --- why??). > > > > You seem to refer to g++ as if it's a separate program from gcc but it's > > really not. All of the middle- and back-end code is shared between the > > language front-ends, so if you introduce C++ there you now require a > > pre-existing C++ bootstrap compiler even for people that have no > > interest or need for C++ language support and are only building a C (or > > Fortran or Java or Ada) compiler. A lot of people have a problem with > > I think java requires c++.
It does, but only to build the target libraries, not to bootstrap. It uses the just-built G++ to do that. Ada is the only frontend right now where you need a pre-existing compiler other than C to *bootstrap* it.
