Re: KEil bought by ARM

In article <1130618781.805034.19160@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, larwe
<zwsdotcom@xxxxxxxxx> writes
>
>Chris Hills wrote:
>
>> Actually Open Source is no match for good commercial compilers in so
>> many ways.
>
>Mmm, you know I was rebuilding an old version of arm-elf-gcc just a
>couple of days ago, and I thought "If only this was a proprietary
>compiler, I'd be able to spend two weeks and thousands of dollars
>finding the right dongle version on eBay - and an old computer to work
>with it - so that I could run this old compiler again for a legacy
>project that only needs a two-line code change".
>

Though it can take weeks to finding the old versions of Open source
compilers and especially getting all the right parts.

With commercial compilers you can usually get the original vendor to
provide the right version overnight. I have myself provided specific
old versions of compilers (amended to work with the current dongle) for
customers in 48 hours and at no cost as they were on support.

SO if you need to make a 2 line change and you have archived the program
it is no problem otherwise it could take a LOT longer to get EXACTLY the
right parts to recreate the open source compiler, especially if it was
some years ago, than pick up from the compiler vendor an exact version
of commercial SW.

Your illustration falls over when you compare like with like. If you
have the source (or executables) for the old SW then the problems are
the same. Unless you are suggesting that the old compiler SW is that old
that it will not run on modern OS?

In which case how exact will the translation be using the old Open
source compiler re-built for the later OS? I assume you compiled it with
the same compiler used originally? if you rebuilt it with a newer
compiler then you have a different compiler and again the illustration
falls over. You may as well use the new version of the commercial
compiler. Assuming you are still using it (or have a newer version that
runs on your current hardware.




--
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/
/\/\/ chris@xxxxxxxxxxxx www.phaedsys.org \/\/\
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/



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