Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!cbmvax!uunet!portal!atari!apratt
From: apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Aztec C for the ST
Summary: the PATH variable
Keywords: c compiler, buggy, late
Message-ID: <1068@atari.UUCP>
Date: 3 Jun 88 18:21:21 GMT
References: <2542@ihuxy.ATT.COM>
Organization: Atari Corp., Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 55

In article <2542@ihuxy.ATT.COM>, nowlin@ihuxy.ATT.COM (Jerry Nowlin) writes:
> Problem 1.
>
> Unfortunately when I tried "cc hello" all I got was a
> temporary file and no ".o" file.
>
> Problem 3. (the clincher)
> 
> discovered that Aztec has
> decided that the library routine names that all the other C compilers have
> found acceptable weren't good enough.

I had Problem 1, too, until I thought about what CC has to do.  It has to
Pexec the assembler.  To do that it has to FIND the assembler.  If you
weren't running under Gulam, or if you didn't set your PATH correctly,
it couldn't find the assembler and left you with the temp file.  Took
me about five minutes to establish that this was in fact the problem
and correct for it (by editing gulam.g for the right directories).

Problem 3 is in the same vein: any compiler product has to make the
assumption that you are in its environment, including using the macros
and libraries that came with it.  If you don't, you can't blame the
compiler for the results.  Macros and libraries are tightly bound.  If I
try to use MWC-specific stuff under Megamax C, it won't work either. 
The osbind.h macro names are the same, of course: they're the
Atari-published OS call names. 

One legitimate beef about Aztec C is that its CC isn't clever enough to
start the linker, and the linker is too clever -- it includes the
runtime startup code by magic.  I would rather have less magic in the
linker and more magic in CC.  Also, CC should complain that it can't
find the assembler, rather than failing silently.

Finally, I would like to point out that Aztec C does more dhrystones per
second than any other compiler for the ST that I tested:

	Compiler	Mode	       NOREG	 REG

	MINIX CC			 522	 522
	AZTEC C 3.6	32 bit large	 772	 830
	AZTEC C 3.6	32 bit small	 779	 837
	ALCYON 4.14			 847	 859
	Megamax 2.0			 874	 919
	MWC 2.0				 996	1042
	AZTEC C 3.6	16 bit large	1058	1128
	Megamax 1.0			1063	1136
	AZTEC C 3.6	16 bit small	1070	1142

These were all using the dhrystone source from Usenet (version 1.1,
dated 01/31/87 from 01/06/86 from 12/01/84, by Reinhold P.  Weicker,
Rick Richardson, with results solicited by pcrat!rick). 

============================================
Opinions expressed above do not necessarily	-- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp.
reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else.	  ...ames!atari!apratt