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From: webber@brandx.rutgers.edu (Webber)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Are binary groups necessary?
Message-ID: <300@brandx.rutgers.edu>
Date: Wed, 22-Jul-87 02:16:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: brandx.300
Posted: Wed Jul 22 02:16:05 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jul-87 01:27:10 EDT
References: <266@brandx.rutgers.edu> <8225@utzoo.UUCP> <272@brandx.rutgers.edu> <2923@ncoast.UUCP>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 66
Summary: references supplied

In article <2923@ncoast.UUCP>, allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) writes:
> As quoted from <1006@aramis.rutgers.edu> by webber@aramis.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber):
> +---------------
> | the function of news.  I am particularly distressed by the posting of binaries.
> | Although I can understand how for a few months after a computer comes out
> | this might be the only reliable way to distribute code, non-optimizing
> | C compilers for standard architectures (such as 68000s, 6502s, and 8088s)
> | just aren't that hard to write.  Access to the source of compilers is not
> | that difficult to come by, besides the Gnu C implementation, I have also
> | seen books containing full source to P-Code pascal compilers.  While these
> +---------------
> 
> News for you.  The Amsterdam Compiler Kit costs $1000 plus.  Gnu C will not

This is not news.  I helped evaluate the Amsterdam Compiler Kit for
people who were locally interested.  That $1000 stands for alot more
than one non-optimizing C compiler.

> run on small machines, as it's designed for VM architectures.  And, I have

Its front end would save someone some work.

> *used* that P-code Pascal book (THE BYTE BOOK OF PASCAL, for those inter-
> ested); if you think its execution speed is acceptable, I challenge you to
> use a PD spreadsheet "compiled" under it.

Interesting.  I wonder if that is the same one I meant.  My source for
Pascal is:
           Pascal Implementation: The P4 Compiler  
            S. Pemberton and M. C. Daniels
            Ellis Horwood Publishers, 1982
which provides an overview of the source in:
           Pascal Implementation: Compiler and Assembler/Interpreter
            S. Pemberton and M. C. Daniels
            Ellis Horwood Publishers  (these two volumes are sold together)

Also of interest is Per Brinch Hansen, Programming a Personal
Computer, Printice-Hall, 1982.

> "Just sit down and write a compiler"???  Look at the Minix compiler some
>...
> their C compiler bug-free enough to be worth using.  It is NOT easy to
> write compilers THAT WORK ON SMALL MACHINES.  And such compilers are rarely
> cheap enough for the people who BUY small machines -- if I could afford

It is easy to write compilers that work.  It is not easy to write a
compiler that work enough better than all other available compilers to
make it a marketable item.  The time and problems come from the bells
and whistles like optimizers and fancy libraries.

> I'm sorry, but judging small computers by large-computer standards is bogus.
> "Let them use sources" is rather like "Let them eat cake", and is just as
> incendiary to the computer-variety peasant.

Well, I certainly didn't advocate buying a compiler.  While I will
grant that (given sufficient funds) it is easier to buy software than 
it is to write it (and that most purchasers of Unix machines have had
the funds to purchase a C compiler), I will not grant that a compiler
for a language like C is so difficult to write that its lack justifies
the transmission of binaries years after the computer was marketted.

But of course, there are people that LIKE binaries.  I remember
reading of one software `donator' that donates binaries-only so that
people can't make `incorrect' patches to his programs.  Sigh.

-------- BOB (webber@aramis.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!webber)