🚀 go-pugleaf

Harald,

You like LISP? Get gcc-2.3.2, un Z it, un tar it, print the INSTALL file,
configure for your machine (and use '--prefix=$HOME' unless you have your own
machine) and do a 'make LANGUAGES=c', then keep going until you get it
installed... now, you can compile the rest of GNU... Check out 'Using and
Porting GNU CC' (available from the nearest 4-year university) and note how
the descriptions of machine instructions look like LISP... To see more, print
a copy of your-machine.md and your-machine.h in the gcc-2.3.2/config directory.

At this point, you have a compiler that is one of the better ones in the unix
world (and probably outside as well) which is (relatively) easily ported to
other architectures (because of its pattern table-driven code generator or
'back end' as it's called) and is also (relatively) easy to design the language
that it compiles. It is also highly configurable, allowing one to set the
number of bits for each basic data type, among a large array of other config
options.

Once you compile the compiler using the compiler that came with your machine,
you compile the compiler again using itself. If you're debugging some changes
you made, you might want to compile the compiler with itself one more time and
compare the object files byte-by-byte. All this functionality is in the make 
file and the 'configure' file.

The compiler has about 12-15 optimization phases; when you have them all turned
on, things are loow... Also, once you're hooked on playing with compiler
innards, it's likely to take half your life...

This text CopyLeft 1992 by Jim Lynch.