Re: [RFC] Suggested replacement for specs and switch handling

[Neil Booth <neil at daikokuya dot demon dot co dot uk>]

Zack Weinberg wrote:-

> On the other hand, a variant of that idea might work: put the new
> driver in a new file (gccdriver.c?) and put conditional Makefile
> parameters set by config.gcc.  This is similar to how we developed
> cpplib.  It also encourages us to recycle as little as possible of the
> mess that is gcc.c.

Yes, that's a good idea.  In fact, I started my own gcc.c locally with
this is mind - I couldn't face a lot of the gunk in gcc.c (although
I'd still be copy / pasting a fair bit, of course).  I wonder if we
should do it this way after all, I quite like it.

> I get the impression that most of the run-time configurability issues
> are more in the line of flipping default settings of switches, than
> completely re-jiggering the command line the way specs can
> (theoretically) do.  And that's easy enough to handle.

Yup, I get the same impression.

> > I'm going to want to know whether my proposal (with modifications like
> > using Autogen instead of hand-parsing, and splitting stuff out on a
> > per-front-end basis) has a good chance of being accepted before I
> > spend any more time on it, or think about creating a branch.
> 
> It's not for me to approve any such patch, but the project does have
> my support, for what that's worth.

It would be nice if one or two guys with global write privs, or the SC
could give me some guidance whether and how to go forward.

Neil.