On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 1:15 PM, Ian Lance Taylor <i...@google.com> wrote: > On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 9:31 AM, Will Hawkins <wh...@virginia.edu> wrote: >> >> Thank you for your response! I don't think that there has to be >> controversy to be interesting. Obviously that split/reunification was >> important, but I think that there might even be some value in >> documenting the minutia of the project's growth. In other words, what >> was the process for incorporating each new version of the C++ >> standard? Who and why did GCC start a frontend for X language? Things >> like that. > > It is easier to answer specific questions. > > There have always been GCC developers that have tracked the evolution > of C++. The first C++ standard was of course in 1998, at which point > the language was over 10 years old, so there were a lot of C++ > language changes before then. GCC has generally acquired new language > features as they were being adopted into the standard, usually > controlled by options like the current -std=c++1z. This of course > means that the new features have shifted as the standard has shifted, > but as far as I know that hasn't happened too often. > > GCC started as a C compiler. The C++ frontend was started by Michael > Tiemann around 1987 or so. It started as a patch and was later > incorporated into the mainline. > > The Objective C frontend was started at NeXT. They originally > intended to keep it proprietary, but when they understood that the GPL > made that impossible they contributed it back. I forget when the > Objective C++ frontend came in. > > Cygnus Support developed the Chill and, later, Java frontends. The > Chill frontend was removed later, and in fact the Java frontend was > removed just recently. > > As I recall Fortran was a hobbyist project that eventually made it in. > There were two competing forks, I think. I don't remember too much > about that off the top of my head. > > The Ada frontend was developed at AdaCore. > > The Go frontend was written by me, mostly because I like Go and I've > been working on GCC for a long time. I work at Google, and Go was > developed at Google, but there wouldn't be a GCC Go frontend if I > hadn't decided to write one. > > There is a Modula frontend that is always close to getting in. I > think there is a Pascal frontend out there too, somewhere. And a D > frontend. > > Ian
Wow, thanks Ian! This is awesome stuff! As I read through it, I may have some additional questions. If I do, would you mind if I emailed you directly? Thanks again for taking the time to write all this down! Fascinating! Will
