
PlayStation 4 System Compiler Support Landing in LLVM - adamnemecek
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=PlayStation-4-LLVM-Landing#
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nickknw
Well this is pretty exciting. This opens up the door for PS4 games to be
written in any language that uses LLVM as a backend, right? So in the future,
PS4 games could be written in D, Rust, Ada, ActionScript...

Especially with the indie focus Sony has had, this could make it much much
easier for people used to creating games with ActionScript to get their game
on a console.

Is there something I'm missing? This seems too good.

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Narishma
You could already do that. LLVM has been the PS4 compiler since day 1. You
still can't do anything with it if you aren't a licensed developer.

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nickknw
Oh I see - you just needed to be a licensed developer to get their version of
it before, is that it?

> You still can't do anything with it if you aren't a licensed developer.

Not sure I follow - what is stopping non-licensed developers from developing
and testing games on their own PS4s now that this has happened?

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Narishma
Retail consoles only run code signed by Sony. When you become a licensed
developer you get special consoles called devkits that can (among other
things) run unsigned code.

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jeremiep
Not only that but devkits also come with the SDKs and tools and access to the
developer network. Plus they cost thousands of dollars. They also usually have
double the specs of the retail console to run debug code and tools. Even USB
connectivity and plugins for VS to debug code running on the devkit remotely.

Also on our Vita devkits there is no battery to make space for the extra ram.

Even with the open sourced compiler you're still missing most of the
toolchain.

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forgottenpass
Is there anything interesting about this? It's not like end users will get any
utility from this, do development studios? Or is this just a way to ease
Sony's maintenance burden?

Yeah, it's probably a good idea in the grand scheme of things to get their
patches back upstream. But is it worth reporting on? Worth posting/upvoting on
social media? It doesn't actually mean anything does it?

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nocut12
It could possibly lead to PS4 support from some more (especially open source)
game engines. That would be a pretty big deal.

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Mikeb85
Not really. The only hurdle is the developer agreements. Even game engines
that are able to run on consoles (Godot, for instance), generally won't give
you the export templates unless you're an official developer.

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scoopr
While this is exciting, so far technically this seems fairly straightforward
stuff, some defines and defaults (enable avx, disable exceptions) set for the
ps4.

I bet the biggest upside is that sony has easier time keeping up with the
current llvm, and so devs get recent compiler versions.

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pantalaimon
If the PS4 really runs FreeBSD, wouldn't it be possible to provide a
compatible userspace on real FreeBSD/maybe even Linux and run PS4 binaries on
a PC?

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sitharus
You'd need to reverse-engineer the PS4 libraries. I have no idea what
libraries Sony provide for the PS4, but I'd assume the UI, audio and graphics
libraries are all custom. There's also probably some sort of DRM library
required to load games off disk.

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sigjuice
Some of these custom libraries are mentioned here.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_system_software](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_system_software)

The PlayStation 4 features two graphics APIs, a low level API named GNM and a
high level API named GNMX. Sony's own PlayStation Shader Language (PSSL) was
introduced on the PlayStation 4

