Re: Question about source-to-source compilation

["Steven Bosscher" <stevenb dot gcc at gmail dot com>]

On 2/21/07, Thomas Bernard <tbernard@science.uva.nl> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> As far as I know, GCC 4.x is easily retargetable for a new architecture.
> I would be interested by source-to-source compilation with the GCC
> framework. For instance, let's say the input language is C and the
> output language is C annotated with pragmas which are the results of
> some code analysis (done at middle-end level). I do not think that the
> GCC back-end could support a programming language such as C, C++ or Java.
> Is GCC 4.x designed to source-to-source compilation ? Is that possible
> or do I miss something here ?

It is not always possible.  GCC is certainly not designed for it. You
will have problems mostly with types and decls, which are hard to
reproduce from the intermediate representation once it has been
lowered to GIMPLE.

Gr.
Steven