Re: CGEN-generated files vs GPL

[Joe Buck <Joe dot Buck at synopsys dot COM>]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 02:05:45PM -0800, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Jan 2009, DJ Delorie wrote:
> 
> > What are the implications (GPL-wise) of using CGEN-generated files in
> > gcc?  Specifically, I'm working on a second attempt to contribute the
> > MeP port, and its intrinsics are CGEN-generated (and there are a *lot*
> > of them - most opcodes have an intrinsic).  I'd rather not have to
> > manually enter all that info twice (there are VLIW tags, latency info,
> > etc - for each intrinsic)
> 
> I believe the source code (i.e., what you'd change to modify the
> intrinsics) needs including in the GCC release tarballs.  I don't think
> CGEN itself needs including, any more than OCaml needs including because
> the ARM NEON intrinsic generators are written in OCaml.

I agree.  The GPL says that the source code is defined as the preferred
form for modification: including only the generated C code would be a
GPL violation.

I think it should be handled in the same way that bison parsers are
handled: put both the input and the output in release tarballs, etc.
There's no more reason to include cgen than to include bison.