Re: PowerPC vs. MCL

[bill@cambridge.apple.com (Bill St. Clair)]

At 10:40 AM 2/24/94 -0500, Doug Currie, Flavors Technology, Inc. wrote:
>>Finally a technical question. To me it seems that migrating to a native
>>PowerPC compiler could be done in steps. As the first step, what about
>>retargeting the existing LAP assembler to reasonably efficient PowerPC
>>code. What I mean is using a M68 instruction model with PowerPC macro
>>instruction replacements. I have undestood that LAP is a relatively small
>>piece of software to be changed this way. What is the problem with this
>>thinking ?
>
>This would work for your LAP code, but I guess that the compiler uses LAP
>code about which it has some built-in assumptions: size, speed, effects.
>Also, Bill said that LAP was used to implement MCL... this does not
>necessarily mean that the MCL compiler generates LAP code as an
>intermediate step. If it does, your idea definately merits more
>exploration.

This is certainly one of the options for porting the LAP in MCL's run-time
(and keep your LAP code working as a free bonus).

MCL's compiler does NOT output LAP, so this will not accomplish that part
of the porting task.