Re: [plugins] Add user attribute

[Taras Glek <tglek at mozilla dot com>]

Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Apr 2009, Richard Guenther wrote:
>
>   
> > On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 8:17 PM, Taras Glek <tglek@mozilla.com> wrote:
> >     
> > > Hi,
> > > This patch adds a user("annotation") attribute to gcc for use with gcc
> > > plugins that require code to be annotated.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Taras
> > >       
> > Hm.  I wonder if it makes more sense to have a plugin hook for attribute
> > processing?
> >     
>
> On the whole I agree that we should let plugins register new attributes 
> (whose table entries would get processed in init_attributes) rather than 
> adding one attribute all plugins have to go through.  These attributes 
> would then have all the flexibility of built-in attributes with regard to 
> the different ways decl_attributes can process them.  If the plugin isn't 
> loaded, they'd get a warning as for unknown attributes at present.
>   
On the other hand, with one plugin-specific attribute it's immediately 
clear to the user that the attribute is for some sort of an analysis is 
not intended for gcc itself. Attributes are typically hidden behind 
macros, so it doesn't matter what the attribute is named, so the end 
user wouldn't really see any benefit.
I agree with Diego that it's nice to have GCC ignore user-attributes 
when no plugin is loaded.

I can make a new patch for registering attributes, but that seems like 
over-engineering to me.

Taras