Re: RFC: named address space support

[Ben Elliston <bje at au1 dot ibm dot com>]

Hi Joseph

> > .. the embedded C proposal as of 2008-01-18 is at stage 90.92.  This
> > suggests that it's very close to being incorporated into the standard.
> > Have I understood that correctly?
> 
> No.  All it means is that TR 18037 is being revised, not anything to do 
> with the standard.  This is a TR Type 2, not an IS, and remains a TR Type 
> 2, not an IS.  [snip]

Thanks for the run-down on the standards process; very helpful!

> A TR Type 2 may be considered as indicating "if you want a feature to
> do this, it may be a good idea to do it this way and so gain
> implementation experience for future standardization".  As such, I
> think it is reasonable 
> to continue to add features from such TRs to GCC, provided we
> understand that they are experimental and may be changed incompatibly
> in future to accord with future TR versions or changes in the course
> of inclusion in the IS; that unlike actual language standards, we will
> not try to provide 
> options to support different versions of a TR in the same compiler
> version.  (The same applies to informative annexes in an IS, which may
> have the same sort of content as a Type 2 TR, such as Annex G in C99.)

This (in addition to Mark's comments) sounds perfectly acceptable to me.
We want the implementation to be standards compliant; if the standard
one day changes the details, we will have to change to be compliant.
Until then, the support should have a big neon sign over it that says
"experimental".

Cheers, Ben