Re: RFC/RFHelp: c-decl.c rewrite - almost but not quite

[Robert Bowdidge <bowdidge at apple dot com>]

On Mar 17, 2004, at 2:12 AM, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> Well, since this is (hopefully) the final data structure, I intended
> that the comments in c-decl.c should explain it adequately.  Can you
> look at those and tell me where they're inadequate?

What I'm hoping for is a summary paragraph saying what these 4000 lines 
of changes mean at a high level -- what were you changing, and why -- 
just so I have some hope of asking the right questions about the patch.

As far as I can tell, it appears that you've added the c_binding 
structure to the name lookup and scoping code.  So how do the c_binding 
structure, c_scope structure, and lookup code interact?  From the bits 
of removed code, it looks like struct c_scope still exists, but that 
most of the lookup questions get done on the c_binding structure rather 
than c_scope structure, and this changed a lot of the commonly-called 
functions.   It also looks like several functions were renamed 
(pushlevel -> push_scope, poplevel->pop_scope).  Any particular reason 
for this?  Are you trying to make the C and C++ code more analogous?  
Is struct c_binding intended to resemble struct cxx_binding?

You also mention that "the new data structure is somewhat more memory 
intensive than strictly necessary."  Ok, which data structure do you 
mean (c_binding?), and why do you think it's more memory intensive?  
Why might this be bad?  Why was it necessary?

I'll admit I'm still a gcc newbie, so part of the problem's bound to be 
that I still can't see the forest from the trees when looking at a 
large patch.  However, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a 
paragraph explaining how the world's changed in this patch; the 
previous patches had nice summaries explaining what was going on from a 
very high level.  Considering that the change breaks the Objective C 
and Java front ends, I'd think that a high-level summary explaining how 
struct c_binding affects the C front end would be essential to get 
someone to fix both of those.

Robert