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Re: Progress on GCC plugins ?
kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) writes:
> > Limited time and steep learning curves. Typically, researchers are
> > interested in rapid-prototyping to keep the paper mill going. Plug-ins
> > offers a simple method for avoiding the latencies of repeated bootstrap
> > cycles.
>
> I don't follow. If you're developing an optimizer, you need to do the
> bootstrap to test the optimizer no matter how it connects to the rest
> of the compiler. All you save is that you do a smaller link, but that
> time is measured in seconds on modern machines.
But users who are not gcc developers have trouble doing a bootstrap.
Our build process is complicated, and it is not getting simpler.
And the sorts of researchers that dnovillo is talking about don't need
to do a bootstrap routinely. They are experimenting with new
optimizations or with static analysis. They aren't generating actual
code. A bootstrap is beside the point.
Ian