John Tobey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I am furthermore *not* suggesting dropping support for non-Unix or
> non-GCC platforms. I am merely saying that that is not where our focus
> should be.
I think our focus should be on portable, standards-compliant code that
will run on any platform that follows the relevant standards, and that
attempts to make up for lacks in following the standards as much as
possible.
gcc is not a standard. gcc is one compiler. Writing code specifically
for gcc is fundamentally a mistake in my opinion; not only does it make
the code more complicated and harder to maintain because you have to
support other compilers as well, but it sends code down long-term
dead-ends when the standard goes a different direction. A lot of those
extensions are buggy or ill-conceived around the corners, and the standard
really does have sufficient power when the code is written properly.
Perl should target the standard and thereby let compilers take advantage
of the optimizations that they can do within the standard. The result
will be a faster, stronger Perl available on more platforms and running
much faster on all of them than a short-sighted and narrow-minded
implementation that considers gcc the "best" compiler and mostly ignores
all the better ones out there for certain platforms. It will also help to
encourage *gcc* to become a better C compiler, rather than a better
compiler for some odd language that isn't quite C.
--
Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
