[Openquartz-general] Playing with QuakeC

[Mike M. <sho...@gr...>]

(I had to change the subject line...it was driving me nuts....And /I/ was
the one that started the thread in here!  :-/ )

On Mon, 27 Nov 2000 12:37:22 Malmberg wrote:
> > I don't think changing the call sytax is a good idea. Too much other
> code
> > depends on it already.
> 
> Well, it's already done. Still, I don't see how changing qcc's call
> syntax can break any code. People will just have to type 'qcc -o
> ../progs.dat quake.qc' (or just 'qcc quest.qc') instead of just 'qcc'.

I think what he meant was that a lot of editors and scripts automatically
just call 'qcc'...Not that they should, of course. :)

> 
> > As to cpp: I want to hack the whole gnu tool chain to grock qc (front
> end
> > parser, back end asm generator (qc asm:), assembler, linker and
> librarian.
> > Just the ability to have separate compilation units would be a nice
> gain.
> 
> It'd be nice in some ways, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

Considering the nature of the oppertunity, I'd say it's definately worth
the effort.  With the potential for enhancements at recognizably separate
parts of the process, a lot more ideas will start flowing.

> In fact, the QuakeC machine is really pathetic, so I'm not sure it's
> positive at all. Remember, you have no registers, no real stack, no
> string manipulation, no address arithmetic, no real arrays, and not even
> a proper integer type.

I was talking with Deek a while back, when he was still interested in
writing a virtual machine to serve as the mod interface to the gaming
engine.  His main reason for not writing it is, AFAIK/IIRC, 'nobody would
use it!'

Well, we're talking about using it right now, aren't we?  Someone with more
of his respect than I ought to broach the subject to him..

> I haven't worked much with gcc's internals (I've considered writing a
> backend/frontend for a simple machine/language just to teach myself how
> it works, but haven't gotten around to it yet), but can it cope with
> something this limited?

I dunno.  I haven't even risked /looking/ at the gcc source...I think I'd
faint.

-- 
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