Suggestions

[Tony van der Hoff]

On Mon, 24 Apr 2000, at 23:24:29, Tom Hughes <tom at compton.nu> wrote on
the subject "Suggestions":

>In message <aVJfNPAlLXA5EwOi at mk-net.demon.co.uk>
>          Tony van der Hoff <OSLib at mk-net.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Secondly, I'm also a bit uncomfortable about the use of the
>> (undocumented) macro __swi, which is only applicable to a single
>> compiler, itself no longer maintained, and probably no longer the
>> mainstream compiler for the platform. How much real benefit does it
>> bestow on the library code?
>
>Well Norcroft is very much maintained, you just don't get new versions
>unless you pay ARM a lot of money ;-) I'd say it's still used by the
>majority of Acorn developers as it is still an excellent C89 compiler.
>

1. Is it maintained as a RISC OS compiler? I believe not.

2. It is an excellent compiler, albeit a bit long in the tooth, but that
doesn't matter. I believe that Norcroft *is* falling into disuse on this
platform (because the average person can't buy it?) as people migrate
onto gcc and c++. I could be wrong, and probably am ;-)

3. My question wasn't phrased very well, I meant to ask how much benefit
is derived from the use of the __SWI macro in the context of the overall
library. That got lost in the compiler issue.

However, none of that doesn't really answers the question of keeping
__SWI, which was where we started. I've no strong feelings, but I do
believe it to be redundant, and as such represents a potential problem
to users which can be pre-empted.

-- 
Tony van der Hoff         |  Mailto:tony at mk-net.demon.co.uk
                          |  Mailto:avanderhoff at iee.org
Buckinghamshire, England  |  http:www.mk-net.demon.co.uk