That's a lot of comments about the new back-end
! Let's clarify some points:
- The x86-x64 asm compilers will still be supported, we don't have a plan to drop them at this point
- The C backend will take time to mature, but will be available for all platform to make it better. It will be based on gcc, and shipped in the PB installer for Windows (nothing to install, plug and play). You could choose your compiler like you do when installing several version of PB)
- Inline C will be supported
- Inline ASM won't be supported directly at start. We plan to add naked ProcedureASM : EndProdecure which will create an assembly file, use fasm and link it to the final exe without needed to do anything
- Compilation in dev mode should be fast as we disable all optimisation in the C compiler and we don't have any include file (flat .c file)
- Compilation in release mode will be much longer, but will produce much faster code especially on processing code (heavy memory data manipulation). If you don't have a lot of processing in your app, and using mostly PB commands, it shouldn't have a big difference.
- From an user point of view, you shouldn't notice anything unless you deal with inline ASM
- It could be some limitation in the C back-end (we have trouble to implement GOSUB properly for example), but it should be very specific and not core functions.
I will do a series of post on the blog regarding the progress and going deeper about this choice, with PRO and CONS about this.
Also don't get too excited, it's not ready for release, even alpha. For example the debugger is not supported yet