It's interesting that they have a Raspberry Pi GPU backend, but neither an ARM backend nor any modern ISA. (such as x86-64, Aarch64, etc.) Is there any example program that actually runs on the rpi gpu? I skimped the website, but it is only mentioned in the release notes.
tl;dr: A kit for targeting several old or old-ish platforms, with code in some languages popular in the 1980s: C89 (ANSI C), Pascal, Modula 2, Basic. A 'kit' here means: frontend, codegen, support libraries and some tools. This is apparently known as being the default toolchain for Minix 1 and 2.
But - the repository is not "everything you need"; it actually relies on a lot from an existing platform - GCC, Lua, Make, Python etc. So, you would typically use this to cross-compile it seems.
One of the first widely used compiler toolkits with multiple frontends, intermediate language for the phases and a common backend.
Contrary to common understanding LLVM wasn't the very first one, ACK also not, there are others predating it when diving into compiler literature.
It's interesting that they have a Raspberry Pi GPU backend, but neither an ARM backend nor any modern ISA. (such as x86-64, Aarch64, etc.) Is there any example program that actually runs on the rpi gpu? I skimped the website, but it is only mentioned in the release notes.
I’m still making my way through the MINIX book. Love it.
Looks cool, last post in 2022 though? Is it feature complete?
This has been posted before
2025: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42833638
2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22310987 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22612420
so what? the search function exists
Why the name amsterdam?
Renamed from Free University Compiler Kit
> © 1987-2005 Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
tl;dr: A kit for targeting several old or old-ish platforms, with code in some languages popular in the 1980s: C89 (ANSI C), Pascal, Modula 2, Basic. A 'kit' here means: frontend, codegen, support libraries and some tools. This is apparently known as being the default toolchain for Minix 1 and 2.
But - the repository is not "everything you need"; it actually relies on a lot from an existing platform - GCC, Lua, Make, Python etc. So, you would typically use this to cross-compile it seems.
> apparently known as being the default toolchain for Minix 1 and 2.
That is not very surprising since Tannenbaum is a professor there and cowrote wrote the ACK and wrote Minix.