I’ve been a fan of Rust as a modern system level programming language since around 2014. C/C++ is ubiquitous in this arena for good reason but are fairly old comparatively to the landscape now.
You may or may not be aware I started a GCC front-end for Rust back in 2014/2015, I was able to support most of the basics of the language fairly quickly. Though back with rust 0.8 there were a lot of language changes most notably the ‘~’ syntax to put data onto the heap which was then replaced with “Box” semantics. This was very hard for me to keep up with at the time and so it seemed like a good idea to just let the world settle.
Recently with special thanks to this github thread, SimplyTheOther, NalaGinrut who have already give contributions. Everyone here has been incredibly lovely and supportive the rust community is actually fantastic!
This has now lead me to resurrect the project which is challenging to say the least it means a full implementation of the compile similar to how gccgo is to the official golang. There are many 2nd and 3rd level effects/benefits this could give the community, more compilers helps keep the main official rust compiler honest when it comes to language stability and changes.
Recently I have become a fan of Andreas Kling and his youtube content for the SerenityOS and have been considering creating the same style of youtube content for the development of the Compiler, would this be of interest to the community?
I’m glad you are resuming this project. I definitely agree about keeping rustc honest but i believe it is important to get as close as possible in level of polish to present that healthy competition.
I hope this project prospers, good luck.