Re: Progress on GCC plugins ?

[Diego Novillo <dnovillo at google dot com>]

Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> 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?

Converting a pass implemented as a plug-in into a static pass is the way 
to add permanent feature in the compiler.  In principle, I don't think 
we'll want to implement permanent features as plug-ins.

> 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.

There is no conversion.  Read Sean Callanan's paper in this year's GCC 
Summit proceedings.  Plug-in code uses the same internal code as 
statically linked passes.


Diego.