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Comment by pbsd | Hacker News Reader

Using C as an output language, backed by guarantees at the higher level, could certainly work. I believe ATS [1] works this way, and can even avoid garbage collection altogether if desired. I understand it is not an easy language, though.

Nimrod [2] also generates C, but as I understand it garbage collection is unavoidable.

[1] http://www.ats-lang.org/

[2] http://nimrod-lang.org/

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This is one reason I'd like to see the removed LLVM C backend brought back and modernized, with Rust as the source language. Rust is safe, has no mandatory garbage collector, and has a much lower impedance mismatch with C or C++ than most higher level languages, so it should work well for libraries that are expected to integrate with C code.

I'm not clear why you'd want to compile your rust down to C, only to then compile that C again? Surely you're better off with a single compiler invocation, and taking rust straight to object code?

I know that historically it's been easier to write a code generator than a compiler backend, but with LLVM you get the backend just as cheaply as the code gen.

Makes it easier to target embedded arches. For example, LLVM doesn't target the MSP430 from TI, but there is a gcc fork for it. Sure, you can write a new backend for LLVM, but that's a whole different ballgame.

This way it would be Rust -> LLVM IR -> C -> GCC for MSP430.

> removed LLVM C backend

What are you referring to here?

LLVM used to have a backend that could convert its low-level bitcode to portable C.

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