Re: Target-specific Front-Ends? (Was: front end changes for altivec)

[Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>]

Stan Shebs wrote:

>Per Bothner wrote:
>
>>Why would we want to put into our compiler a TARGET-SPECIFIC syntactic
>>extension to handle the rather generic concept of a fixed-size vector?
>> And why
>>would we want to add a configure mechanism to do that?
>>
>>Let me answer for you:  We don't.
>>
>Who's this "we" you're referring to?  It can't be the body of GCC
>contributors, because Zem is in that group, and it's not the
>maintainers, because I haven't decided yet - I'm interested
>in the arguments for and against.  If the "we" refers to an SC
>decision, you should say so explicitly.
>
"We" means "all Right-Thinking People", of course! :-)

By "we" I meant "Per Bothner and those who agree with him"!   I guess
and hope that the latter might in this case would include "most of the
experienced gcc maintainers and most members of the Gcc steering
committe" but I don't know for sure.  I could be wrong, both about this
issue, and what other people (would) feel about it.

>Zem's proposal does challenge GCC orthodoxy, but in the past
>you've been the one to question the rules imposed by other people.
>
We're not talking rules here - except those of taste.

>Surely he deserves the opportunity to make his case,
>
He has made his case.  He admits it is not a clean extension, but
justifies his case by legacy code.  I don't think that is a strong enough
case - you yourself has suggested the amount of such code cannot
be very large.

> and as the
>discussion today shows, there continues not to be a consensus on
>whether it's even possible to have generic syntax for vectors,
>so you can hardly fault him for trying to come up with creative
>ideas to resolve this longstanding impasse.
>
I don't fault him at all.  If I were in his unfortunate position I might do
the same.  I just don't think what he is proposing is a good idea.

    --Per