Retargetable Compiler Case Studies

Abstract

This chapter describes a selection of retargetable compilers and code generation techniques. We focus on a representative list of specific tools and techniques. Due to the limited space, we naturally cannot cover many interesting details, but these are mostly available in several publications anyway. Instead, our goal is to highlight their advantages, limitations, and novel concepts, as well as to put the different approaches into context. Additionally, we mention practical issues like availability and licensing terms of software. Clearly, also many other compiler techniques besides the ones mentioned here are retargetable in the sense that they show a certain degree of machine independence. However, we focus on tools and techniques that explicitly use some kind of machine model in order to adapt the compiler to different targets. In addition, we restrict our review to approaches that have at least some relation to compilers for embedded systems.