🚀 go-pugleaf

From: Emil Rainero  <emil>



>I would appreciate most
>to hear from someone who has tried BOTH of these compilers.  But in lieu of
>some generalist comments, anyone having tried and liked either would have
>my undying gratitude for helpful comments.
>
>THINGS TO CONSIDER:
>
>	1 - Price
>	2 - Convenience of using the product.  (i.e. how closely does it
>	    conform to both the standard Mac interface.)   
>	3 - How closely does the product come to K & R specifications.
>	4 - Does the product have good debugging tools (symbolic debugger, etc.)	5 - What about the linker and librarians.
>	6 - Can all toolbox routines be accessed?
>	7 - What quality of code generation does the compiler give?
>


I've used both.  I started with Mac C about three months ago and megamax C
about two weeks ago.  What follows are my very biased opinions.



Consulair Mac C Disadvantages:

1.	No debugger (all C compilers share this misfeature)
2.	No sfputfile/sfgetfile/create/fswrite/fsread
	To be fair, the assembler knows about these toolbox calls
	and appropriate library routines could be written.
3.	resource maker is very minimal (all on the mac are)
4.	no floating point
5.	no register variables
6.	My biggest complaint is two pass compiling.  By this I mean
	producing an assembly language listing and then assembling 
	it.  Just to give you an idea of how time consuming it is, here
	is how a normal compile goes.

	From the editor we invoke the exec program on a file that says
	what to compile/assemble/link.  The normal 15 second delay before
	we even enter the compiler.  Now about 15 more seconds to do the 
	compile and to write an assembly language listing to disk.  From the 
	compiler we get zapped into the assembler (15 more seconds) wich 
	then reads in the assembly language listing and takes about 15 more 
	seconds to assemble and write out a rel file of our code. Now another
	15 seconds to invoke the linker and another 15 seconds to link out 
	files and another 15 seconds to get back to the editor.  By the way,
	then linker is very fast and stupid, so entire libraries get loaded 
	with your code.



Megamax C Disadvantages:

Megamax C shares some of the problems of Consulair.
1.	No debugger (all C compilers share this misfeature)
3.	resource maker is very minimal (all on the mac are)
6.	Takes about as long as consulair to get a running C program.  
	Compiling is not much faster and the linker is painfully slow
	for a generic macintosh program.
7.	all lower case toolbox (while convertible to mixed) is
	not standard.



Consulair Mac C Advantages:

1.	register based calling should be faster than Megamax C
2.	ditto for parameter accessing
3.	having the 6800 MDS is very important for any serious mac
	development.
4.	mixed upper and lower case toolbox is Apple Standard



Megamax C Advantages:

1.	full toolbox available
2.	mac SANE floating point
3.	object code improver (haven't tried it)
4.	register variables
5.	code segmenting


FINAL COMMENTS

I prefer Megamax C by a very small margin.  Having the full toolbox and floating
point is crucial for my work.  Both have reasonable mac user interfaces,
assembly level macsbug debugger, minimal rmaker, inline assembly code,
edit, batching.  I think the "Bat out of hell compiling" of Megamax C
is not an issue if you are doing mac development as opposed to standard
C development.  I didn't notice and real difference in total turnaround time
using either system.  My biggest problem with any of the C compilers is the
extra hassles converting between Pascal and C strings.  A desk accessory demo
would be nice.  If Consulair Mac C would come out with a floating point
version with segmentation and full toolbox support I think the scales will 
tip in their favor.



	Emil Rainero
	UUCP:	(..!{allegra, decvax, seismo}!rochester!emil)
	ARPA:	emil@rochester.arpa
	USmail:	Emil Rainero, Dept. of Comp. Sci., U. of Rochester, NY 14627.
	Phone:  Office: (716) 275-5365   Home: (716) 424-5016