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GCC has had an open-source Fortran compiler front-end since always. The only possible reason for Nvidia to do this is because they want to have proprietary com
by tedks 11y ago
GCC has had an open-source Fortran compiler front-end since always.
The only possible reason for Nvidia to do this is because they want to have proprietary compiler addons someday.
Remember that this was a predictable outcome when you're inevitably burned by this.
- kevinchen 11y agoGCC includes a Java frontend too, but do any serious Java shops use it? It's not just about having a feature, it's about implementing that feature well and making it easy for others to contribute their improvements.
- cwyers 11y agoOr, alternatively, Nvidia is doing this because their current CUDA compiler works with LLVM. And a possible reason that they built their CUDA infrastructure on LLVM is because the people making GCC privileged ideology over technical merit and made it much harder for tools (even open source or libre ones) to integrate with the compiler. Remember that this was a predictable outcome when you're inevitably burned by this.
- tedks 11y agoDoing a rewrite seems to me to always result in a cleaner codebase faster than the incremental refactoring. That said, GCC today is a lot easier to interop with than the GCC of pre-LLVM times. But, no amount of technical merit can save you when you don't have a free compiler anymore. Don't say Stallman didn't warn you, because he did, just like he warned you about all the other crap. Remember, when you're getting burned by this, that you chose to make snarky comments on the Internet instead of realizing what the moral path forward was and doing the ethical thing.