[aus.mac] C compilers for Macintosh - Opinions/Suggestions ?

grants@usage.csd.unsw.oz (Grant Sayer) (02/27/89)

This isssue has probably been considered before but ....
does anyone have any comments on a suitable C compiler for the Mac II. ?
Which is preferred - MPW C or Lightspeed C ?

Thanks in advance
Grant Sayer (grants%usage.csd.unsw.oz@munnari.oz)

stephen@uowcsa.cs.uow.oz (Stephen Nicholson) (02/28/89)

In article <267@usage.csd.unsw.oz>, grants@usage.csd.unsw.oz (Grant Sayer) writes:
> This isssue has probably been considered before but ....
> does anyone have any comments on a suitable C compiler for the Mac II. ?
> Which is preferred - MPW C or Lightspeed C ?
> 

Well, Lightspeed, whichever machine you run it on, will be the faster. Esp.
for the quick development of programs. MPW is perhaps the more complete
environment with all its tools, rather like Unix. MPW however will eventually
support C++, and the new MPW will compile in the background under Multifinder.

As for the actual compiler themselves, there is not a lot of difference. They
all seem to be able to do much the same sorts of things.

I guess that overall I would be likely to go for Lightspeed C V3. It is
faster due to its pure compilation speed, its ability to keep libraries
in memory and thus run the programs straight away without too much
linking, and the fact that V3 has precompiled headers which speeds the
whole system up again.

I think that most everything that you want to do during development
should be able to be done with Lightspeed. The new version allows for
inline assembler, but MPW will let you write straight assembler files.
I guess that I like Lightspeed when it comes down to it.

				Stephen.



 Stephen Nicholson		ACSnet:	stephen@uowcsa
 Dept. of Computing Science	UUCP:	...!munnari!uowcsa.oz!stephen
 Uni. of Wollongong		ARPA:	stephen%uowcsa.oz@uunet.UU.NET

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