🚀 go-pugleaf

From: hamachi@ucbkim (Gordon Hamachi)

Attention would-be compiler buyers.  Here are the results from my
informal survey of C compilers for the Macintosh.  At the Macworld Expo
this weekend I went from booth to booth, running the same benchmark
through each vendor's compiler.

The benchmark was the sieve program as published in Byte magazine,
August 1983.  The benchmark did not use register variables.  The "Size"
entry in the table refers the the size in bytes of the a.out resulting from
compiling the sieve program.  The "Small" entry shows the size of the a.out
for the trivial program main(){printf("Hello, world.\n");}.  This gives a
measure of the incremental size of the code produced by the compiler.


Vendor	  Memory  Disk        Compile  Link   Load+Run Run   Size   Small
===========================================================================
Megamax   512K    Floppy       7.9      71    13.0     6.6   5484    5276
Megamax   512K    Corvus Omni  2.7      23     9.2     6.6   5484    5276

Softworks 128K    Floppy      77.4     111.9  15.8     8.8  34560   26368

Consulair 512K    HyperDrive  19.2      14.5  15.2     8.0  10496   10240

Hippo 2   512K    Ram Disk    11.6       8.8  14.1     ---  13864     ---


Note that no two vendors had the same hardware configuration. It is
hard to make comparisons because of these hardware differences.  I assume
that a RAM disk is faster than the HyperDrive, which is faster than the Corvus
Omni, which is faster than the floppy.  How much faster? I've written
to the companies to see if they will send me software for further analysis.

Run times were measured with the stopwatch on my digital wrist watch.  I'd
like to redo this using the tickcount() function from the Mac toolbox.

Manx Aztec C was not in attendance.  Too bad.

Megamax looks pretty good in every category except linking time.  It compiles
like the proverbial bat out of hell.  I don't see linking time
as a problem as you win big in the size of the resulting a.out file.
Theirs is the only linker that throws out routines it doesn't need.  If only
you could selectively turn that optimization on and off.  Softworks uses
the Apple (Consulair) linker.  I forget, maybe Hippo does too.
They go directly from source to object, with no intermediate assembly step.
It is fast, but you can't look at asm code except by disassembling.

On the other hand, I found a couple of bugs in the Megamax compiler.
Remember when you read this that I spent more time with this compiler than
any of the others, so don't jump to any conclusions.

The Softworks compiler seemed a bit more complicated to use.  It has built-in
optimization that you can't turn off.  On the other hand, unlike the Megamax
compiler, you can look at an intermediate assembly language file and even
munge around with it.  Some quirks of Softworks:  You MUST have at least one
global variable, and that global variable must be initialized at compile
time.  Every line must be terminated by a carriage return.  It is a compiler
error if the last line ends in a '}'.  My impression is one of killing a
gnat with an atom bomb.  It is a port of the Whitesmith C compiler.  Does this
mean that it is a "real" compiler, capable of gracefully handling mammoth
programs?

Consulair has the most Mac-like user interface.  It seemed slick and the
easiest to use.  Better performance may be on the way--code optimization and
floating point are planned for mid April.  Originally this release was planned
to be much earlier.  Bill DuVall's wife said that Bill has been tied up putting
the finishing touches on the Apple MDS package.  Their booth seemed to get a
LOT of attention.  It was hardest to get near this booth, let alone run a
benchmark.

Hippo had a unix-like interface.  The prompt was even a percent sign.  Many
of the expected commands like "ls" and "rm" were there.  You compile by typing
"cc" followed by command line arguments.  You exit to the finder by typing
"logout".  There's a certain appeal to this kind of environment.  I'd like
to use it for a few days and then decide which is better.  Let's face it,
the easiest to use systems make you select a file from a scrolling dialog
box, but if the file you want isn't visible in the window, it is clumsy and
annoying to scroll the window in search of the file.

All the vendors were helpful and friendly.  The folks at Softworks and at
Hippo seemed more distracted (burned-out?) than the others.  Consulair and
Megamax seemed the most lively and helpful with my evaluation project.

Not to leave anyone out, I talked to a guy who swears by the Aztec C compiler
from Manx.

Please use these numbers for comparison only.  Your mileage will differ,
and may be less.  Some weaknesses with my evaluation:  Non-uniform
hardware.  Only one small program, no "real sized" ones.  Timing was a bit
sloppy, and tended to include the time to load a program.  Thus, compilers
generating big a.out files tend to run slower by my way of measuring.

My best advice is to try as many of these compilers as possible and draw your
own conclusions.  Or, hope that all vendors send me evaluation copies, and
watch this space for future announcements.

If anyone knows of a Macintosh C compiler I've left out, please tell me
their name and address.

--Gordon Hamachi