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diff --git a/contrib/gcc/doc/languages.texi b/contrib/gcc/doc/languages.texi new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..514cb08ecced --- /dev/null +++ b/contrib/gcc/doc/languages.texi @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +@c Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. +@c This is part of the GCC manual. +@c For copying conditions, see the file gcc.texi. + +@node Languages +@chapter Language Front Ends in GCC + +The interface to front ends for languages in GCC, and in particular +the @code{tree} structure (@pxref{Trees}), was initially designed for +C, and many aspects of it are still somewhat biased towards C and +C-like languages. It is, however, reasonably well suited to other +procedural languages, and front ends for many such languages have been +written for GCC@. + +Writing a compiler as a front end for GCC, rather than compiling +directly to assembler or generating C code which is then compiled by +GCC, has several advantages: + +@itemize @bullet +@item GCC front ends benefit from the support for many different +target machines already present in GCC@. +@item GCC front ends benefit from all the optimizations in GCC@. Some +of these, such as alias analysis, may work better when GCC is +compiling directly from source code then when it is compiling from +generated C code. +@item Better debugging information is generated when compiling +directly from source code than when going via intermediate generated C +code. +@end itemize + +Because of the advantages of writing a compiler as a GCC front end, +GCC front ends have also been created for languages very different +from those for which GCC was designed, such as the declarative +logic/functional language Mercury. For these reasons, it may also be +useful to implement compilers created for specialized purposes (for +example, as part of a research project) as GCC front ends. |