Re: [q-lang-users] Q, virtual machines, native compilation

[Sandro M. <sm...@na...>]

Sean Russell wrote:
> I looked at LLVM a while ago for another project.  An install of LLVM consumes 
> 1.1GB of disk space.   An estimate for a minimal installation of an LLVM 
> interpreter (for executing bytecodes) is 70MB.  Any development would require 
> the full gigabyte of space.  
> 
> A Hello World executable, who's sourcecode was 211 bytes, compiled down to 138 
> bytes, so the bytecodes produced were pretty space efficient -- not 
> surprising because of that 70MB runtime gorilla in the background.


Actually, I don't see this at all. The LLVM 1.5 source code is 3.7MB; 
unpacked that's 17.5MB. GCC front-end binaries are approximately 6.5MB 
(differs by platform). The GCC front-end source code is ~30MB, but I 
don't think the GCC source is necessary for a custom language, though I 
could be wrong.

LLVM doesn't seem like a behemoth at all. How did you get the above 
numbers? What's factored into them?

One factor to also consider: versions prior to 1.5 built the backend 
code-generators for ALL targets by default (PPC, x86, Sparc, Alpha, 
etc). 1.5 allows one to specify the targets, so only the host arch can 
be selected; I imagine this is what Q would want.

Sandro