Many compiler designers would say that a compiler is a production-quality if it implements all the features in the language, puts out good code and has good error diagnostics and recovery (Kukol, 1990). The cost here is in compiler performance, so this is not a good definition in terms of compiler performance. We will discuss features and techniques separately, pointing out their assets and liabilities. This will be especially important if "production-quality" means small and fast, and we will mention separately such features and techniques.
Section 12.1 lists some techniques for the design process itself.