5 ms·

And they weren’t cheap either. The Sun compiler was over $1000 IIRC.

pjmlp 2y ago
That was the reason why GCC adoption took off in first place. During the UNIX freebie days no one cared about Stalmman's freedoms. After Sun being the first UNIX vendor to split UNIX into multiple SKUs, for developers and users, then GCC suddenly became relevant after all. For languages like Ada, this was even worse, because SunOS/Solaris SDK only contained traditional UNIX compilers. For something like Sun Ada compiler, it was extra.
- anthk 2y ago
  You all forgot something: on stability and speeds, Unix compilers rot over time. From 1996-1999, the stable choice on both speed and reliability was the GNU one. https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~blbowers/fuzz-2001.pdf https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~blbowers/fuzz-2001.pdf FVWM ran circles around MWM or CDE itself about speed. Rxvt was much lighter than an xterm, not everyone needed to plot Tek graphs. Even some late Irix users preferred JWM against the propietary options. Nowadays, GNU's the slight bloated one, being Guix the 'essential' GNU distro, making lots of 32 bit machines without SSD's a crawling nightmare to install.
  - nineteen999 2y ago
    > From 1996-1999, the stable choice on both speed and reliability was the GNU one. Meh, gcc 2.8 was buggy as hell on Linux/i386 by around 1998, as was gcc 2.95 up to 2.95.3. The issues with it are what led to the egcs fork which eventually replaced the original gcc branch. So it wasn't all sunshine and roses.
    - guenthert 2y ago
      I thought it was missing features in the C++ compiler and its less-than-perfectly-clear error messages which led to the split. The C compiler was pretty sound early on. Sure, occasionally there were bugs, but users, including Linus Torvalds, complained loudly about those, because expectations were already high.
    - CalChris 2y ago
      EGCS was started because of Stallman. They refused to criticize him directly but it was clear from their Declaration of Independence email that it was Stallman. They even used its language but avoided Stallman’s name to make the eventual merge politically possible. https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/History#EGCS https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/History#EGCS
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Can't say much on that regard, because we only used GCC on Linux distributions, everywhere else it was the vendors C compilers. Interesting that you mention stability, exactly during the GCC vs egcs politics time frame.
    - guenthert 2y ago
      I worked in a small shop in the late nineties where we used gcc during development within the MS Windows environment because MS' own compiler (Visual C++, iirc) produced either (depending on settings) no warnings or buried the relevant ones under those of questionable code in the system header files. We had to use MS's compiler for the final product, as gcc couldn't produce shared libraries in that environment at that time, otherwise we would have gladly used only gcc.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        Anyone that tries to use UNIX stuff on non-UNIX OSes ends up having to deal with interoperability pains, hence why cygwin and mingw keep being leaky abstractions, regardless how much better GCC might generate raw code versus VC++. Additionally, nowadays clang also ships alongside VC++, and is offically supported by Microsoft as well.
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  > During the UNIX freebie days no one cared about Stalmman's freedoms. No one cares about their freedom until they are denied it.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    The rise of non-copyleft licenses proves that the only freedom most people care about is their wallet's. Most GPL software won't survive its authors, even Linux kernel remains to be seen when Linus et al are gone, and it gets taken over by newer generations VC driven.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - medo-bear 2y ago
      > The rise of non-copyleft licenses proves that the only freedom most people care about is their wallet's. This ignores how much freedom the wallet requirement takes away.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        Apparently most people care more about being able to make a living out of selling software, as supermarkets are quite bad at taking Github stars, while others rather not pay for the work of others. Nothing related with Stalmman's freedoms.
        medo-bear 2y ago
        Alot of people also make money standing on the shoulders of people who made free software
        matheusmoreira 2y ago
        Which is why the only good free software license is the AGPLv3. https://web.archive.org/web/20120620103603/http://zedshaw.com/essays/why_i_gpl.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120620103603/http://zedshaw.co... > Why I (A/L)GPL > I want people to appreciate the work I’ve done and the value of what I’ve made. > Not pass on by waving “sucker” as they drive their fancy cars. Anything other than AGPLv3 is really just transferring wealth directly into the pockets of the beggar barons. https://zedshaw.com/blog/2022-02-05-the-beggar-barons/ https://zedshaw.com/blog/2022-02-05-the-beggar-barons/
- einpoklum 2y ago
  > During the UNIX freebie days no one cared about Stalmman's freedoms. On the contrary, they cared plenty, because GNU freedoms let them have a usable, reasonable-quality (and sometimes high-quality) environment both as developers and as users, which they could otherwise not get unless they were rich or employed by a corporation (who would then have them do what it wanted, not what they might have wanted to spend their time on).
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    No they didn't, that is why before Stalmman, most UNIX stuff was either free because AT&T wasn't allowed to charge for UNIX as commercial product, or MIT/BSD license. Which is how UNIX workstation market came to be, and how even Windows ended up with BSD code on the networking stack.
  - p_l 2y ago
    GCC usage IIRC exploded when Sun made their compiler suite extra paid option instead of bundled as part of standard SunOS install. Before that, GCC was of interest particularly on platforms that didn't provide good CC - a lot more platforms with various quality of software - by comparison the big name workstation vendors that survived longer also had higher quality compilers. When compiler suite was included by standard, GCC had much less of a benefit to many users (I think gdb actually might have driven more?)

That was the reason why GCC adoption took off in first place. During the UNIX freebie days no one cared about Stalmman's freedoms. After Sun being the first UNIX vendor to split UNIX into multiple SKUs, for developers and users, then GCC suddenly became relevant after all. For languages like Ada, this was even worse, because SunOS/Solaris SDK only contained traditional UNIX compilers. For something like Sun Ada compiler, it was extra.

anthk 2y ago
You all forgot something: on stability and speeds, Unix compilers rot over time. From 1996-1999, the stable choice on both speed and reliability was the GNU one. https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~blbowers/fuzz-2001.pdf https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~blbowers/fuzz-2001.pdf FVWM ran circles around MWM or CDE itself about speed. Rxvt was much lighter than an xterm, not everyone needed to plot Tek graphs. Even some late Irix users preferred JWM against the propietary options. Nowadays, GNU's the slight bloated one, being Guix the 'essential' GNU distro, making lots of 32 bit machines without SSD's a crawling nightmare to install.
- nineteen999 2y ago
  > From 1996-1999, the stable choice on both speed and reliability was the GNU one. Meh, gcc 2.8 was buggy as hell on Linux/i386 by around 1998, as was gcc 2.95 up to 2.95.3. The issues with it are what led to the egcs fork which eventually replaced the original gcc branch. So it wasn't all sunshine and roses.
  - guenthert 2y ago
    I thought it was missing features in the C++ compiler and its less-than-perfectly-clear error messages which led to the split. The C compiler was pretty sound early on. Sure, occasionally there were bugs, but users, including Linus Torvalds, complained loudly about those, because expectations were already high.
  - CalChris 2y ago
    EGCS was started because of Stallman. They refused to criticize him directly but it was clear from their Declaration of Independence email that it was Stallman. They even used its language but avoided Stallman’s name to make the eventual merge politically possible. https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/History#EGCS https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/History#EGCS
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Can't say much on that regard, because we only used GCC on Linux distributions, everywhere else it was the vendors C compilers. Interesting that you mention stability, exactly during the GCC vs egcs politics time frame.
  - guenthert 2y ago
    I worked in a small shop in the late nineties where we used gcc during development within the MS Windows environment because MS' own compiler (Visual C++, iirc) produced either (depending on settings) no warnings or buried the relevant ones under those of questionable code in the system header files. We had to use MS's compiler for the final product, as gcc couldn't produce shared libraries in that environment at that time, otherwise we would have gladly used only gcc.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Anyone that tries to use UNIX stuff on non-UNIX OSes ends up having to deal with interoperability pains, hence why cygwin and mingw keep being leaky abstractions, regardless how much better GCC might generate raw code versus VC++. Additionally, nowadays clang also ships alongside VC++, and is offically supported by Microsoft as well.
matheusmoreira 2y ago
> During the UNIX freebie days no one cared about Stalmman's freedoms. No one cares about their freedom until they are denied it.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  The rise of non-copyleft licenses proves that the only freedom most people care about is their wallet's. Most GPL software won't survive its authors, even Linux kernel remains to be seen when Linus et al are gone, and it gets taken over by newer generations VC driven.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - medo-bear 2y ago
    > The rise of non-copyleft licenses proves that the only freedom most people care about is their wallet's. This ignores how much freedom the wallet requirement takes away.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Apparently most people care more about being able to make a living out of selling software, as supermarkets are quite bad at taking Github stars, while others rather not pay for the work of others. Nothing related with Stalmman's freedoms.
      - medo-bear 2y ago
        Alot of people also make money standing on the shoulders of people who made free software
        matheusmoreira 2y ago
        Which is why the only good free software license is the AGPLv3. https://web.archive.org/web/20120620103603/http://zedshaw.com/essays/why_i_gpl.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120620103603/http://zedshaw.co... > Why I (A/L)GPL > I want people to appreciate the work I’ve done and the value of what I’ve made. > Not pass on by waving “sucker” as they drive their fancy cars. Anything other than AGPLv3 is really just transferring wealth directly into the pockets of the beggar barons. https://zedshaw.com/blog/2022-02-05-the-beggar-barons/ https://zedshaw.com/blog/2022-02-05-the-beggar-barons/
einpoklum 2y ago
> During the UNIX freebie days no one cared about Stalmman's freedoms. On the contrary, they cared plenty, because GNU freedoms let them have a usable, reasonable-quality (and sometimes high-quality) environment both as developers and as users, which they could otherwise not get unless they were rich or employed by a corporation (who would then have them do what it wanted, not what they might have wanted to spend their time on).
- pjmlp 2y ago
  No they didn't, that is why before Stalmman, most UNIX stuff was either free because AT&T wasn't allowed to charge for UNIX as commercial product, or MIT/BSD license. Which is how UNIX workstation market came to be, and how even Windows ended up with BSD code on the networking stack.
- p_l 2y ago
  GCC usage IIRC exploded when Sun made their compiler suite extra paid option instead of bundled as part of standard SunOS install. Before that, GCC was of interest particularly on platforms that didn't provide good CC - a lot more platforms with various quality of software - by comparison the big name workstation vendors that survived longer also had higher quality compilers. When compiler suite was included by standard, GCC had much less of a benefit to many users (I think gdb actually might have driven more?)