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Comment by mcdonje | Hacker News Reader

Pretty sure you have it backwards. GCC isn't going to be a front end for rust; rust is going to be a front end for GCC. As I understand it, the point of both GCC and LLVM are to handle those implementation specific behaviors so programming language developers don't have to handle that concern. I don't expect this to fracture the language, but simply to provide the ability to use the language in more places.

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Sorry, to be clear, I'm referring to the CPP reimplementation of the Rust compiler that uses GCC as a backend (gccrs).

My concern with fragmentation is that this is essentially a reimplementation of Rust in another language (C++) targeting a different backend (GCC). It's only natural for there to be differences between the two, especially over a long period of time.

There is a separate initiative that may be more in line with what you're thinking which adds GCC backend support for the existing mainstream Rust compiler.

I think what will prove more important than standards will be a common suite of tests used by all implementations. Sun used to have TCK[1] that was used by a few implementations.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_Compatibility_Kit

There are two GCC ports for Rust being developed at once: codegen_backend_gcc is a module in the reference implementation of rustc, while rust-gcc is a complete C++-based compiler: https://github.com/Rust-GCC/gccrs/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Ques...

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