If you are providing some compiler extensions and keeping the rest of the compiler proprietary then maybe.
This is interesting: What about parts of the runtime distributed with the compiler (e.g. libgcc) and often linked statically? Are there specific exceptions for them?
I do agree with freebuser ...
As for OP, I think his posts are improving as far as striking a decent tone, but could still stand some improvement in how they're written. Best I was able to understand, OP is wondering about how FreeBSD decided to use first its own homegrown C compiler, then switching to GCC, and then dropping GCC in favor of Clang.
I think this is the only post I ever saw on this forum since 2009 that I'd like to give thanks and like at the same time.
I think these are addressed here. The FAQ at the bottom is useful too.
Because it never had.
So, what did FreeBSD use prior to adopting GCC as system default?
Uhm, I'll quote myself here from this very thread:
-> FreeBSD never "adopted" GCC.
Seems like I may need to learn to read in Git...
I appreciate bakul 's tip, would be nice if I had the expertise to properly take advantage of it.
Well, on PDP-11/VAX, there was probably a different compiler
if you're interested, that would be a way to find out…Yeah, that kind of behavior is better left to reddit.
Maybe lang/pcc. Could be interesting because according to Wikipedia, it was used on BSD prior to 4.4BSD.
Question is: for what purpose? Just to have a look at them and play around with them, or to do real development stuff?
– I don't program the C64 in C, but use cc65's assembler (ca65).Even playing around with special purpose compilers/assemblers has value. Learning the logic behind their design, and getting it down, and being able to compare the logic patterns - it's that kind of skill that would be valuable for projects like Russia's Elbrus 8C (Discussion right here on these forums) or China's Loongson. Politics aside, this looks like serious brain gymnastics (A term I credit Alain De Vos with inventing
) to keep people busy I was playing with that the other day when testing out this processor emulator:There are of course quite some "special purpose" compilers, like e.g. devel/cc65 targeting machines like the C64
That's why I still enjoy programming the C64, this machine can be understood as a whole by a human being
not that I know every single bit in every memory-mapped register by heart (this machine uses MMIO exclusively, there's an I/O area that can be mapped to 
0xd000-0xdfff, I love this simplicity), but that can be looked up quickly if needed.I don't see the point of using older and less well-maintained "just for fun", that's probably a waste of time. Right now, among the free and commonly used compilers for x86 machines (32- and 64-bit), clang is the gold standard, when measured by the efficiency of the generated code. There are compilers that are "better" than gcc and clang in that respect. For example, the Portland Group makes a superb C++ and Fortran compiler. Their main focus is parallel programming, today mostly using GPUs. But even even on non-parallel codes on x86 it generates excellent code, which is typically faster than that from free compilers. But: The PG compilers cost money, I think big money. And buying them just for compiling regular programs for a single CPU would be silly; the small performance benefit has no relation to the large cost. If you have a few tenthousand CPUs and a million GPUs, then it matters greatly.
