Historical question about BSD C compilers
spi...@gmail.com
these days is the GNU one. But since BSD is older than gcc
I was wondering what used to be the standard C compiler(s)
for the system ? What has happened to those compiler(s) ?
Cheers
Spiros Bousbouras
Andrew Reilly
The pre-GCC BSD implementations tended to use the C compiler provided by
the hardware or CPU manufacutrer, I think. I remember DEC and Sony MIPS
workstations used MIPS' compilers. Sun maintained their own compiler in
the pre-solaris days (although I couldn't sware that there wasn't a GCC
available by then too.) (Did Sun do their own 68k C compiler, or just for
SPARC? I can't remember.)
There was a "portable C compiler", pcc, at least on Vaxen, but that was
strictly K&R C, and I can't remember whether it ever supported much
besides vax.
--
Andrew
Doug McIntyre
Whatever the C compiler was for that system. :)
Hows that for an answer?
You have to understand that before GCC was around (first release in 1987?)
that Unix systems were grown more organicly over time. It could have
started out as say a v7 system, and added on some of the BSD utils
(ie. from 1BSD or 2BSD) on the PDP systems.
By the time a full kernel came out (limited in 3BSD, or more full
grown in 4BSD), that the system probably started out as something else
and got merged into the 4BSD kernel and probably had lots of tools and
utils from other places. Adding on gcc would have just been another tool.
Or the system was brought up cross-compiled from another system using
whatever they could. The PCC (portable C Compiler) was used for the
systems that it had ported over, or the system vendor's C compiler,
etc. etc. All early 4BSD systems required USL licenses anyway.
By the time that 4BSD was starting to get to be fully standalone from
USL, gcc was around and was able to be used on many of the systems.
spi...@gmail.com
> Or the system was brought up cross-compiled from another system using
> whatever they could. The PCC (portable C Compiler) was used for the
> systems that it had ported over...
PCC , what's that ? Wikipedia doesn't have an article.