"Timothy D. Gray" <timgray@LAMBDANET.COM> wrote:
> GCC can have extensions written for it  so that the GCC C compiler will
> act as your pic compiler.

GCC is heavily biased toward code generation for 32-bit architectures.  It's
fairly difficult to write a backend for GCC for 16-bit processors, let alone
8.

GCC also generally assumes that the return stack is in main RAM, which is not
true of PICs.

Backends have been written for the 6809, 68HC11, and PDP-11, but those
are all much closer to the architectural assumptions of GCC.

I won't say that it's impossible to retarget GCC to the PIC, but if anyone
succeeds in doing so, such that GCC can be productively used on a common
PIC (e.g., PIC16F84), I'll gladly pay them $100 for it.

> or just use yacc and whip one up.

Just like that, huh?  Yacc's quite a useful tool, but even with Yacc a C
compiler isn't just a quick hack.