Announcement: Alien Module and Bindings for the Tiny C Compiler

[David Mertens]

Hello everyone!

I have finally written and uploaded the first version of Alien::TinyCC and
the second version of C::TinyCompiler. I am spamming all of you because
either (1) it seems appropriate for the list or (2) I think that you might
be interested based on personal conversations we've had.

*The Tiny C Compiler* is a small, fast, nearly C99 compliant C compiler
written for Linux and Windows, which can also compile object code on Mac
(but cannot produce Mach-O executables or dylibs). It targets 32- and
64-bit Intel instruction sets as well as ARM architectures. The compiler is
very fast, but what you get in compile-time speed you lose in non-optimized
machine code. However, it's still machine code, and it offers a library
that includes functionality for compiling arbitrary strings of C code at
runtime! For development, see http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/tinycc.

*C::TinyCompiler* provides an interface to using that just-in-time
compilation capability, as well as a framework for building reusable
components in the system. If you are using one of the major platforms and
have to generate code at runtime, this will probably be a better tool for
you than Inline::C. If your C code is static, the one-time hit for
compilation will pay for itself with the caching mechanism, and the code
will execute faster, so you're better off sticking with Inline::C in that
case. For development, see https://github.com/run4flat/perl-TCC.

*Alien::TinyCC* installs the Tiny C Compiler to a non-invasive location
which is almost certainly not in the user's path, but the module itself
fiddles with $ENV{PATH} and, possibly, $ENV{LD_LIBRARY_PATH} to ensure that
the compiler and its main library are available within the Perl environment
that invokes the module. Note that this module does not pay any attention
to a local install of tinycc, it *always* installs tcc under the
distribution sharedir for Alien::TinyCC. For development, see
https://github.com/run4flat/Alien-TinyCC.

*New as of this morning* is the Alien module, and the modification to
C::TinyCompiler to use it. Now C::TinyCompiler has a decent chance of
building and operating on the most popular systems. I expect to hit a few
bumps, of course, so I am writing to solicit *testing and feedback*.

Please spread the word to any and all who might be interested. Also, there
is plenty of room for improving C::TinyCompiler, especially fleshing out
C::TinyCompiler::Perl as well as making C::TinyCompiler::Callable more
efficient. I would also be happy to see modules that provide
C::TinyCompiler interfaces to C libraries.

Thanks!
David