[Mono-list] Re: Should I fork the MonoBASIC project out of MCS?

[Serge]

Hello Kunle,

>> BTW, from a end-user point of view I'd prefer more lightweight standalone
>> compilers, more than compiler suites.
>Why exactly?. What would be the difference?.

For non-technical reasons. There will be less command line switches, for
example. This is what I'm expecting to see, one compiler for C# and another
for VB. There are separate tasks in NAnt for this, so it's easier to think
"one task -> one compiler". I mean no matter how this is implemented - even
if these compilers are just thin wrappers around one huge Compiler
Collection ;-)
Frankly, I know nothing about VB, so I can't tell nothing meaningful about
implementation issues. But again sharing/reusing code in .NET framework is
easy, no need to think in terms of shared libraries, mangled names and the
like, all public stuff in mcs.exe can be reused.
Speaking in traditional terms, Mono compilers are frontends, IL is IR,
Reflection API is a middle tier to manage IR, and JIT or static compiler is
a backend. Cool! :-)
I think MCS in its current state is nice, lightweight and easy to read.

BTW, if I remember correctly there are some static Java compilers
(Harpoon?), compiling Java (or bytecode?) to C code, so solving backend
problem (multiple "backends" immediately available, not only GCC).
Also some time ago Paolo posted a link to article from one of the GCC
developers:
http://www.linux-mag.com/2001-04/GCC_net_01.html
Very interesting read.

Cheers,
Sergey