info-mac@uw-beaver (12/15/84)
From: James.Anderson@CMU-CS-K
Recent posts seem to indicate that people don't know too much about
what compilers are available for the mac, the following info is from
net.micro.mac, pardon me if I abreviate.
Using the "sieve" bench mark as a test program, the following results were
obtained by a researcher at Comdex.
compiler time size comile/link time
Megamax 4.17 5k 105
Softworks 7.0 25k 300+
Consulair 10.0 12k 125
Hippo 60+ n/a n/a
You will see that the Megamax compiler blows the others away, Aztec was
not rated at that time, but a later review placed as roughly equal to
Softworks. I happened to see the post after already having the Megamax
compiler. After using Sumex C, this compiler was a major relief. The
Megamax people are very good on customer service as well, on finding a
bug I called them and was called back almost immediately by a knowledgeable
and courteous technical representitive, who was in fact the person that
wrote the linker, and much of the other source as well. They immediately
shipped a new disk with a more current release that had the bug fixed.
Some points of comparison:
Floating point.
Sumex's is very buggy, just try it.
Consulair reportedly doesn't have it.
System interface.
several compilers have a limited amount of access to the macintosh
internal routines, Megamax supports all the ones I've looked for so
far and you will soon be able to purchase the source code for the
library routines. The system library also has several unix system
calls implemented as well. (printf, scanf, fopen, etc.)
Another great selling point is the price, which is fairly cheap.
>From what I've seen they can't keep them on the shelves.
So for my money, this is the best compiler currently available, and the
company says it is going to get even better, but don't let that delay
your purchasing one because they offer a free upgrade when the new system
is released. Personally, I am very pleased with the product.
Jim Anderson
jwa@cmu-cs-k
jwa@cmu-ee-a
Disclaimer:
None of the above reflects the opinions of my employers or anyone
other than myself.