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up vote 22 down vote favorite
4

According to this post :

http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/MS-working-on-a-same-compiler-for-C-AND-C--Not-in-incubation-but-for-production-

How much truth is in this post? Should it be taken seriously by hardcore C++ programmers (game devs etc)??

Edit : There's another purpose to this question... Will C# be backward compatible with C++?

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+1 because the linked job postings on the Microsoft site do indeed mention a compiler for c# and C++ careers.microsoft.com/jobdetails.aspx?jid=81769 – MarkJ Nov 28 '12 at 8:48
I wonder why its not in the news these days.... – user73830 Nov 28 '12 at 9:13
Both C# and C++ can benefit from the same optimisations performed over a common IR, therefore it might make sense to have a unified compiler. – SK-logic Nov 28 '12 at 13:31
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Why should it be backward-compatible? These languages are too different, which does not mean they cannot both share the same compiler middle layer (while still targeting the different backends). – SK-logic Nov 28 '12 at 13:40
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E.g., the polyhedral analysis (which they've mentioned explicitly in the ad) will be exactly the same for both languages, with some additional dependency on aliasing analysis for the C++ frontend. – SK-logic Nov 28 '12 at 13:43
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closed as not constructive by thorsten müller, Steve Evers, gnat, Walter, Jan Hudec Nov 28 '12 at 13:29

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2 Answers

up vote 8 down vote accepted

Not a chance in hell. It would take the most drastic refactoring of a language ever to make it work with C++ and it would break every inch of existing C# code. They're most likely just trying to share the same native code generation framework.

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up vote 6 down vote

Probably incorrect in the specifics. MS already has a native MSIL compiler in the form of Ngen. It wouldn't surprise me if both Ngen and cl used the same code gen back end so that they share improvements like the mentioned auto vectorization.

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No, cl does not share any common backend with ngen. – SK-logic Nov 28 '12 at 14:00

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