ghc sparc NCG

[Duncan Coutts]

On Fri, 2006-06-02 at 15:10 +0200, Georg Sauthoff wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> at http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Platforms I read, that the
> Sparc NCG 'is bitrotted' - does that mean, that it is unmaintained, but
> used by default at sparc?

No it means that GHC uses compilation via C on sparc.

> I am asking because the solaris sparc system has a ghc 6.2 installed,
> which generates .s files. Or does NCG means something else?

When GHC compiles via C, it generates '.hc' files and uses gcc to
compile these into assembly '.s' files. When GHC uses its NCG it
generates '.s' files directly. In both cases it uses gcc to assemble
these '.s' files into object code '.o' files.

So if someone were to take up maintainership and fix the bitrotted sparc
NCG then we could use -fasm again rather than the default being -fvia-C
and benefit from quicker compile times.

Duncan