History

The GCC Resource Center was set up in January 2008.

A significant effort was spent prior to creating the center. Versions of GCC starting from 2.95 were studied by reading the source code, referring to the mailing lists, asking people, reading the available documentation and experimenting. This started in 2003-2004. Although the theory and algorithms that make a compiler were well known, tackling the huge source code base turned out to be a formidable task. Moreover, the GCC code was a moving target. Most experiments to figure out the internals were performed on GCC version 3.3.3. By the time we were in a position to verify our various hypotheses, GCC grew up to version 4, and it was 2006-2007.

As our knowledge grew we offered more and more services as listed below.

  1. Understanding GCC:

    We ported the GCC 2.95 implementation of some client specific processors to GCC 3.3.

  2. Improving GCC

  3. Value additions to GCC:

    To share the knowledge of the internals, we conducted a workshop on GCC internals in June 2007 that focused on the machine description system in particular, and retargetability of GCC in general. The workshop was a big success, and there has been a continuous demand for more. The success of the workshop followed by demands for more gives a strong indication of the vacuum, and the GCC Resource Center is an outcome of the efforts to reach wide.

All the work and know-how of the GCC internals is now available as a part of the publications on this site. Various people have contributed to the effort over these years.