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Re: Progress on GCC plugins ?
On Nov 15, 2007, Diego Novillo <dnovillo@google.com> wrote:
> If/when your pass reaches certain maturity, you think it's ready for
> production, and people think it's a good idea to have it in the
> compiler, then you convert it into a static pass and you go through
> the traditional bootstrap process.
> That's the core idea with plug-ins, they allow more flexibility for
> experimentation. They are not a means for implementing permanent
> features in the compiler.
I find the two paragraphs above contradictory. If they're not means
for implementing permanent features, then converting a pass
implemented as a plugin that's ready for production into a static pass
is what?
It raises an issue of how important it is that this plugin
architecture, if it is to exist, be similar to the internals of GCC,
such that the conversion is as simple as possible.
OTOH, the more GCC internals it relies on, the less useful it is to
abstract away GCC's internal complexities.
Looks like conflicting goals to me :-(
--
Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}