On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 at 20:40, Peng Yu wrote: > > On Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 2:22 PM Jonathan Wakely <jwakely.gcc@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > It would probably be possible, but it would not be practical (as mentioned, not all systems that GCC runs on have a good shell). The GCC drivers do a lot more than just launch other processes, so "shell scripts are good for launching other processes" isn't a good enough reason to do it. Also "shell scripts are easier to maintain" is subjective, > > This is a general conclusion from the first principle. As long as the > purpose is to glue things, shell should be by definition better (given > the misconceptions that need to avoided when using shell). You are assuming its purpose is just "to glue things". It does non-trivial processing of command-line arguments and config files, as well as translating diagnostic messages to different languages. It's all possible in shell, but that doesn't mean it's the best solution for a complex, cross-platform program. Nobody is saying it's impossible. But you're stating it would be better with no evidence (just general statements about shell programming, that may or may not be relevant to the GCC driver programs). > Also, if bash is used and if you really want to have C-like > performance for some time-costly parts, bash builtins can be made, as > bash builtins are just shared libraries which are C-like fast by > definition. However, if there is anything binary in nature is better > to hide them from bash, as bash natively is not good at dealing with > binary data. Not everybody who uses GCC has bash installed. There are other shells, including simpler ones without features found in bash.
