Donald_B_Phillips@cup.portal.com (05/27/88)
I am considering doing software development on the MAC SE. I would like to
know:
1) What C compiler/environments are available for the MAC.
2) Peoples good/bad experiences with same.
3) Portability of C code written for other micros.
4) Good sources of information/books on problems/solutions for doing
ports.
Please respond by EMail. If there is enough interest, I'll post a summary.
Thanks in advance,
Don Phillipsdorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David O'Rourke) (05/31/88)
In article <5968@cup.portal.com> Donald_B_Phillips@cup.portal.com writes: >I am considering doing software development on the MAC SE. I would like to >know: > 1) What C compiler/environments are available for the MAC. As far as I'm concerned there are two: 1) Light Speed C from Think. Good FAST c compiler with good support for the Macintosh programming enviroment. The price includes a text editor, linker, and smart compiler. 2) MPW C: This is a tool extension to the Macintosh Programmers workshope. The shell cost $200 and includes the assembler and linker. It is a Unix style shell complete with: Shell scripts, make files, and separate compilers. The C compiler is $200 extra after buying the shell. Also a hard disk and memory upgrades are required to *REALLY* benifit from MPW. If you're looking for cheap, good, fast. Light Speed C is it. If you want a really nice development enviroment that's not as fast as LSC, but offers extensive software tools MPW might be worthing looking into. > 2) Peoples good/bad experiences with same. Compilers on the Mac seem to do pretty well, No major problems. > 3) Portability of C code written for other micros. I really don't know. But the Mac is so different from any other Machine that a lot of the tricks don't work. In addition no other micro has over 800 system calls for supporting windows, mouse, graphics, ect... The Macintosh is an amazingly complecated machine to program, not as easy as a PC or other micro's. > 4) Good sources of information/books on problems/solutions for doing > ports. I don't know. >Please respond by EMail. If there is enough interest, I'll post a summary. Sorry mail out of here is touch and go, so I posted it on the board to make sure you got it. -- David M. O'Rourke Disclaimer: I don't represent the school. All opinions are mine!
drc@dbase.UUCP (Dennis Cohen) (06/01/88)
In article <2978@polyslo.UUCP>, dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David O'Rourke) writes: > In article <5968@cup.portal.com> Donald_B_Phillips@cup.portal.com writes: > >I am considering doing software development on the MAC SE. I would like to > >know: > > 1) What C compiler/environments are available for the MAC. > > As far as I'm concerned there are two: > 1) Light Speed C from Think. Good FAST c compiler with good support > for the Macintosh programming enviroment. The price includes a > text editor, linker, and smart compiler. You forgot to mention that the list is $175. > > 2) MPW C: This is a tool extension to the Macintosh Programmers > workshope. The shell cost $200 and includes the assembler and > linker. It is a Unix style shell complete with: Shell scripts, > make files, and separate compilers. The C compiler is $200 > extra after buying the shell. Also a hard disk and memory > upgrades are required to *REALLY* benifit from MPW. Not quite right, $350 total ($300 if you don't want the assembler). There are also MegaMax, Consulair, and Manx (AztecC). From the aspect of portability, I think that Aztec should be considered; however, if you are going to support multiple environments be sure to modularize ANYTHING which is HW specific. I've found that most reasonably written (i.e. they don't make assumptions about byte ordering, etc) programs will port over to Aztec and MPW almost unchanged and to LSC with little extra effort, but they'll be plug-ugly. If all I ever did was work on one-programmer projects in C, I'd use LSC and virtually forget the existence of others. Since I mostly work on multi- programmer projects and switch between languages as appropriate, my preference has been for MPW (I have Asm, C, Pascal, ICON, and Modula-2 -- with more to come). Dennis Cohen Ashton-Tate Macintosh Division dBASE Mac Development Team -------------------------- Disclaimer: Opinions expressed above are _mine_!
sdh@thumper.bellcore.com (Retief of the CDT) (06/03/88)
> >There are also MegaMax, Consulair, and Manx (AztecC). From the aspect of >portability, I think that Aztec should be considered; however, if you are going >to support multiple environments be sure to modularize ANYTHING which is HW >specific. I've found that most reasonably written (i.e. they don't make >assumptions about byte ordering, etc) programs will port over to Aztec and MPW >almost unchanged and to LSC with little extra effort, but they'll be plug-ugly. > I have to disagree with the portability issue here. I just finished a substantial project in C for a class at school, and on a lark I moved it to the Mac. I had the 9K program up and running EXACTLY as it does on UNIX within a half hour. Similarly, I moved a one-pass assembler from UNIX to the Mac and that took a couple hours (this was due to a bug in LSC's malloc that has since been corrected). Finally, last year I worked on porting a 27K line window manager from the Sun to the Mac. It took 2 weeks (mostly due to rewriting the bitblit code to be upwardly Mac compatible). As a benchmark: compiling in from scratch on the Mac took just under 4:20. On the Sun it takes > 16:00. Sompare the clock rates on the machines and you will be pleasantly surprised. LSC is also about 10 times faster than the compiler on our 750 at school. Steve Hawley sdh@bellcore.com hawley@oberlin.edu