Re: Contributing LLVM.org patches to gud.el

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

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  > So to reiterate: LLVM was created because of GCC's deliberately
  > non-modular, non-reusable architecture, and not because GCC
  > was GPLed. The fact that LLVM is not GPLed and permits proprietary
  > forks is a side effect of the history (and potentially a very bad one)
  > but was not what caused LLVM to come about to begin with.

That is true.  However, the issue for us is the effects of LLVM,
not its motivation.

  > So to reiterate: LLVM was created because of GCC's deliberately
  > non-modular, non-reusable architecture,

That is not so.  I made GCC as modular as I could.

  > As I understand it, the goal of making GCC non-modular was to prevent
  > the use of GCC to write proprietary front and back ends that do not
  > link directly to GCC.

I think you have got some misinformation here.

I made GCC as modular as I could.  The RTL level was the main
interface and I documented it with great thoroughness.  I tried
to make all interfaces as clean as possible.

But that was not my highest priority.

There is one thing I tried to discourage, many years later: separating
the front end and the back end into different processes.  You're
supposed to link the back end with the front end.

Designing modules to link together does not mean they are non-modular.

In 1988 it didn't occur to me that anyone would ever think of doing
that.  It would be too slow.  I took for granted that the front end
and back end would link together, and wrote them for that.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
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