7 Jan
2019
7 Jan
'19
4:32 a.m.
On Sun, Jan 6, 2019, 7:59 PM A. P. Garcia <a.phillip.garcia(a)gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Jan 6, 2019, 9:39 PM Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com wrote:
The portable c compiler PCC was used to bootstrap a lot of this. It kinda
sucked, but was decent enough. Early unix vendors used it on a variety of
platforms. Here different universities produced different back ends. But
there was no central clearing house. Gcc was a bit innovative in that it
provided that, which allowed people to cooperate enough to make it better
than PCC, at first. Then better or comparable to vendor compilers.
Competition with gcc in large measure drove Sun to unbundle its compilers
so there was a revenue stream that could be pointed at technology
improvements. Somewhere between 4.3 and 4.4 BSD started using gcc over pcc
since it was easier to distribute. The gnu project was important, but not
because it rewrote the kernel. It provided the enabling compilers for
that...
Warner
On Sun, Jan 6, 2019, 7:06 PM Steve Nickolas <usotsuki(a)buric.co wrote:
It's really hard to say. How would you compile it? Clang didn't come along
until 2007. The Amsterdam Compiler Kit, perhaps?
On Sun, 6 Jan 2019, A. P. Garcia wrote:
If not for GNU, Unix would still have been cloned. Net/2 happened in
parallel, did it not?
Berkeley actively rewrote most of unix yes. Net/1 was released about the
same time GNU was getting started. Net/2 and later 4.4 BSD continued this
trend, where 4.4 was finally a complete system. BSD386 only lagged Linux by
about a year and had much stronger networking support, but supported fewer
obscure devices than linux...
Warner
Ps I know this glosses over a lot, and isn't intended to be pedantic as
to who got where first. Only they were about the same time... and I'm
especially glossing over the AT&T suits, etc.