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Re: rtl understanding till what level?
- From: Bryce McKinlay <bryce at waitaki dot otago dot ac dot nz>
- To: rashmi kankaria <rashmi_k at email dot com>
- Cc: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 15:46:49 +1300
- Subject: Re: rtl understanding till what level?
- References: <20020227023542.23089.qmail@email.com>
rashmi kankaria wrote:
>if one is given a task of writing a front end of gcc like the existing frontend for cpp(typically till creation of ast with managing other things ofcourse ..) then how much knowledge of rtl is required?
>
None. All communication between a front-end and the back-end is via the
AST ("tree"), front-ends do not need to deal with RTL at all. However,
some understanding of RTL can certainly help with debugging.
> does gcc documentation provides that much help or else needs to go thru the source files to really understand the rtl exprs..?
>
RTL seems to be fairly well documented in the GCC manual. The AST format
is less well documented, mainly in tree.def, tree.h, and c-tree.texi for
the C/C++ specific tree nodes. The front-end interface basically isn't
documented at all, and is still more complex than it needs to be. All
you can do is look at the other front-ends and do what they do.
regards
Bryce.