applications

This page begins with a table of popular open-source applications which can be compiled correctly with nwcc.

The table lists results from the most up-to-date version using the most favorable environment. For example, Mac OS X/x86 support is much worse than Linux/x86 support, but I do most software compatibility testing on Linux/x86. Also, the software version number isn't listed; Not all versions may work with nwcc.

Note that "second-tier" architectures such as PowerPC and SPARC haven't received a lot of testing yet. Some of the programs listed below (such as gzip and less) have been tested and found to be working on all of them at some point. However, a full test run with the current version is missing and will be done later.

The status of an application is distinguished as follows:

• Yes: The program compiles and has no known runtime errors
• Yes: The program compiles, but has not been tested for runtime errors
• Yes: The program compiles, but is known to exhibit runtime errors
• No: The program doesn't compile

It is important to keep in mind that the absence of runtime errors is never guaranteed. I've tried many of the compilable applications superficially without finding bugs, but there may well be bugs in code paths that weren't covered by my tests.

Applications

Version	x86	AMD64	SPARC	MIPS	PPC
gcc	Yes	?	?	?	?
PHP	Yes	?	?	?	?
Apache	Yes	?	?	?	?
PostgreSQL	Yes	?	?	?	?
tar	Yes	?	?	?	?
less	Yes	?	?	?	?
lynx	Yes	?	?	?	?
wget	Yes	?	?	?	?
xterm	Yes	?	?	?	?
gxemul	Yes	Yes	?	?	?
Python	Yes	?	?	?	?
nasm	Yes	?	?	?	?
strace	Yes	?	?	?	?
nwcc	Yes	?	?	?	?
bash	Yes	?	?	?	?
lsof	Yes	?	?	?	?
gawk	Yes	?	?	?	?
mksh	Yes	?	?	?	?
nano	Yes	?	?	?	?
links	Yes	?	?	?	?
gzip	Yes	?	?	?	?
gmake	Yes	?	?	?	?
vim	Yes	?	?	?	?
gsed	Yes	?	?	?	?
bison	Yes	?	?	?	?
zsh	Yes	?	?	?	?
lsof	Yes	?	?	?	?
findutils	Yes	?	?	?	?
Tcl	Yes	?	?	?	?
Monkey httpd	Yes	?	?	?	?

Scroll down for some test suite results for the current version.

Version history

Version	x86	AMD64	SPARC	MIPS	PPC
0.8.3	Yes	Yes	?	?	?
0.8.2	Yes	Yes	?	?	Yes
0.8.1	Yes	Yes	?	?	Yes
0.7.9	Yes	Yes	?	?	Yes
0.7.8	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes
0.7.7	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes
0.7.6	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?
0.7.5	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes
0.7.4	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
0.7.3	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
0.7.2	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?
0.7.1	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
0.7	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
0.6.6	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
0.6.5	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
0.6.4	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
0.6.3	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
0.6.2	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
0.6.1	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
0.6	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
0.5	Yes	No	No	No	No
0.4	Yes	No	No	No	No
0.3	Yes	No	No	No	No
0.2	Yes	No	No	No	No
0.1	Yes	No	No	No	No
0.1-pre	Yes	No	No	No	No

Test suite

nwcc has always had a test suite containing various simple regression tests. Every one of those tests is composed of a single C source file, which is compiled once with nwcc and once with gcc. The output of the resulting programs is compared to determine whether the nwcc-compiled program yields the same output as the gcc-compiled one. Since gcc is very mature and proven, divergence from gcc output is considered a bug (this means that the test's output should not depend on peculiarities like exact object memory addresses, order of function argument evaluation, and outright undefined constructs).

There is another new test suite which tests some more involved things, like compiling some files with gcc and some with nwcc, and linking them together to check ABI compatibility.

The topic of this page is a much newer and bigger test suite: A modified version of the gcc test suite! I have taken all of the C files from the gcc test suite and adapted my nwcc test suite script to them (for example, many of those files do not have a main() function, and thus only test whether the code is compiled at all). This test suite has been used to find and fix many bugs, and will henceforth help measure progress on the various supported architectures.

Note that many tests of the original suite have been removed (or changed) for one reason or another. Most importantly, I have deleted all test cases making use of GNU C and C99 features that are not desirable in nwcc (at least for the time being). See the bugs page for a list of some of those features. A few tests which still yield compile time errors border on the undesirable and may be deleted in the future. Various other tests which do illegal things like dereferencing uninitialized pointers were also removed.

The test results are from Linux on x86, AMD64 and PPC64. AIX was used for PPC32. The test suite cannot be run on SPARC yet because the SPARC test system has a broken gcc installation, and Sun's compiler wouldn't handle the GNU C test files properly. MIPS test suite results could be obtained, but MIPS support is too weak to try it at this point.

Version	Result	x86	AMD64	SPARC	MIPS	PPC32	PPC64
0.8.3	Passed	1590	1590	?	?	?	?
	Runtime failure	11	8	?	?	?	?
	Compile error	33	36	?	?	?	?
0.8.1	Passed	1587	1585	?	?	?	1553
	Runtime failure	12	12	?	?	?	17
	Compile error	35	35	?	?	?	62
0.7.9	Passed	1587	1585	?	?	?	1553
	Runtime failure	12	12	?	?	?	17
	Compile error	35	35	?	?	?	62
0.7.8	Passed	1581	1579	?	?	1539	1553
	Runtime failure	12	12	?	?	23	17
	Compile error	41	44	?	?	70	62
0.7.7	Passed	1568	1566	?	?	1518	1541
	Runtime failure	13	11	?	?	29	16
	Compile error	52	57	?	?	105	76
0.7.6	Passed	1572	1566	?	?	?	?
	Runtime failure	11	10	?	?	?	?
	Compile error	52	57	?	?	?	?
0.7.5	Passed	1438	?	?	?	?	?
	Runtime failure	134	?	?	?	?	?
	Compile error	63	?	?	?	?	?
0.7.4	Passed	1431	?	?	?	?	?
	Runtime failure	139	?	?	?	?	?
	Compile error	65	?	?	?	?	?
0.7.3	Passed	1345	?	?	?	?	?
	Runtime failure	215	?	?	?	?	?
	Compile error	75	?	?	?	?	?