[fpc-devel] Summer of code collaboration

[Vittorio Giovara]

On 10/feb/2013, at 15:58, Florian Klaempfl <florian at freepascal.org> wrote:

> Am 10.02.2013 15:23, schrieb Vittorio Giovara:
>> Indeed, a fpc->js code generator would have a rather limited use. A
>> LLVM backend instead could be use on many more levels, and for example
>> could improve (or replace) the compilation process on iOS.
>
> Improve in which regard? Experience showed that the more tools involved the less comfortable the use of FPC is. Within a few minutes you can build on any platform a win32 cross compiler (if the CPU is fast enough) because no external tools are involved. Compare this with cross compiling to linux (no to talk about darwin): takes usually 1-2 hours to setup: first, download, configure and build binutils, then sort out the libraries and copy them to host system, and then with some luck (if binutils are not broken), building fpc might work.

Well the existence of external tools is what has allowed technology to
foster and advance, eg have some common grounds and entry points...
Your (limited) example is not exactly perfect, the tools that fpc
bundle on windows are often outdated and conflict which the other
tools (off the top of my head mingw or ld). And I successfully
crosscompiled Darwin from Linux, it was a much less painful process
than setting up a build environment under Windows.

But I digress.
The iOS experience could be improved in many ways, for example in
Xcode you cannot set a breakpoint and when you do so with gdb all you
get is an assembly viewer; having a LLVM backend could actually allow
a better debugging and other tricks such as those provided by
www.piecable.com

> Not to mention that I estimate that full llvm support with debugging and extending llvm to support everything required by fpc might be more something like 1-2 years of full time work than a few summer months of work of a student.


I know that this is not going to be an easy project but please as I
said don't underestimate students, GSoC people have carried out tasks
that revolutionized more than one organization.  Moreover I think that
trying to offer help to achieve this long term goal is better than
pestering on IRC with "is the LLVM-fpc branch ready yet??"

Cheers,
Vittorio

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