esg@hou4b.UUCP (E.S.Gokhman) (01/07/85)
Hi, Could anyone advise me how, where, and when to get a good ( best ?) deal on mac ? I looking also for good c comipler. Thanx in advance, Ed (hou4b!esg) Gokhman
esg@hou4b.UUCP (E.S.Gokhman) (01/10/85)
I have received a substantial number of very valuable suggestions about the mac and c compiler. I want to thank you for your advises and have a happy New Year! I still would be glad to listen to new advises, and if there is an interest - I will post a review of observations and ideas that I received. Thanks again, Ed Gokhman
esg@hou4b.UUCP (E.S.Gokhman) (01/16/85)
I have received a few letters requesting a summary on the advises I have gotten about the mac and c compiler. Following are the most interesting responses that I have received about the mac and C compilers. I also have receive a few verbal suggestions from the people who received my news postage and new me. There are few points to remember when you getting a C compiler, one of them should be noted: >For the commercial development make sure that you don't have >to get a license on the environment, or at least take it into the >consideration when determining a selling price. Now, the responses: ==================================================================== I'm sure the longer you wait the better the deals will be on mac prices. As for C compiler, Aztec C and Megamax rate pretty high. Aztec has the advantage of good unix compatibilty ( it includes a vi-like editor, grep, and make). I'm not to sure if Aztec has implimented a librarian in their compiler. A full blown C Aztec C package cost approx $400. Note that Versaterm was writen in Aztec C. The megamax package costs about $250 runs fast, compiles on a 128k system (I don't think Megamax needs 2 drives. Aztec C does need 2 drives however.) and uses a librarian to weed out unnecessary library routine. I don't have the addresses for these two companies, but they are well advertised. Other compilers tend to be slow (Hippo C) or generate large binaries (Softworks) or lack Unix compatibility. Sean Casey ...ihnp4!oddjob!sean ==================================================================== I would recommend Mac C from Consulair Corp. Their phone number is (415)851-3849. The address is 140 Campo Drive, Portola Valley, CA 94025. I am very happy with Mac C. I have had good support from Consulair and the compiler is pretty solid. My impression is that Mac C is the best compiler available for the Mac. Second best is probably the Manx C compiler. Hippo is a C learning environment rather than a production compiler. I don't know a lot about Megamax except that they are not compatible with some of Apple's conventions, their compiler is supposed to be a little faster than Mac C but not enough to matter. Softworks is a port of the Whitesmiths compiler and I would avoid it. About the only reason I can think of for not choosing Mac C is the lack of support for floating point in the current compiler. There is a new release planned in Feb. 1985 that will add floating point (using Apple's SANE package) and some post K&R extensions (structure assignment etc.). So, if you absolutly must have floating point NOW, get the Manx package, otherwise get Mac C. The compiler is fairly fast and it is nicely integrated with the editor, assembler, linker etc. The I/O speed of the floppies is the major performance limitation. I am not sure what the size limits are on a 128K system but I believe that you are unlikely to have any problems. I have a 512K Mac, but I run off RAM disk so I do not have much more main memory space than a 128K system. Steve Langdon ...!{ihnp4,hplabs,sun,nsc}!amdahl!sjl ==================================================================== A good C compiler is Megamax C. The benchmarks on all compilers show that this one is most favorable (see old netnews - I'm not sure which article). Also, the company has a tech support staff for $150 a year and they are VERY nice on the phone - they will answer questions without paying for this program. They are interested in ;updating their product and are sending out a new release soon. Assembly lang. stmts can be put in line - they give complete header files for MAC structures (HIPPO C does not). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Based on the mail that I got asking to post the information that was sent to me, I think it would be interesting if some guru in compiler evaluation (unfortunately, I am not one) will advise on the general points to remember and potential problems in buying a c compiler. Emulation of Unix environment is important if you port unix programs, wich is pretty common for c people. Copywrited environment, though, is inconvinience if you are thinking about marketting your software. The utilization of the rom software may be a critical point. Speed and compactness are "must"s if you are serious. Prices are not as important as far as they stay in a tolerable range of =< $400, wich appears to be the case for most of the compilers. Handling of floating points is important depending on what applications you intent to write. Link editing capabilities could be crucial in some cases. It would be interesting to know about the c++ type of compilers. Does it worth it ? Thank you, again, for your responses. Ed Gokhman
ted@usceast.UUCP (Ted Nolan) (01/19/85)
> I'm not to sure if Aztec has >implimented a librarian in their compiler. A full blown C Aztec >C package cost approx $400. Note that Versaterm was writen in Aztec > > (..................................... Aztec >C does need 2 drives however.) Manx Aztec C does have a librarian (though not an impressive one) and it WILL run on a one drive system (you will just badly wish you had 2.) Avoid using too many source files (a few big ones are better than a lot of equivalent little ones) and make a bootable disk for just the compiler and one for the linker and you should be ok. Ted Nolan ..usceast!ted -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ted Nolan ...decvax!mcnc!ncsu!ncrcae!usceast!ted (UUCP) 6536 Brookside Circle ...akgua!usceast!ted Columbia, SC 29206 allegra!akgua!usceast!ted@UCB-VAX.ARPA (ARPA, maybe) ("Deep space is my dwelling place, the stars my destination") -------------------------------------------------------------------------------