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Re: new concept checks and the 3.0 ABI
- To: Gabriel dot Dos-Reis at cmla dot ens-cachan dot fr (Gabriel Dos Reis)
- Subject: Re: new concept checks and the 3.0 ABI
- From: Joe Buck <jbuck at racerx dot synopsys dot com>
- Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 09:45:38 -0700 (PDT)
- Cc: Gabriel dot Dos-Reis at cmla dot ens-cachan dot fr (Gabriel Dos Reis), jason_merrill at redhat dot com (Jason Merrill), bkoz at redhat dot com (Benjamin Kosnik), jbuck at synopsys dot COM (Joe Buck), libstdc++ at gcc dot gnu dot org
> What we need to tell users is what exactly is meant by "C++ ABI won't
> change". As discussed, it is the fact that what is described in
>
> http://www.codesourcery.com/cxx-abi/
>
> will be implemented in GCC/g++ and that interface won't change.
>
> I don't recall any discussion to the effect that libstdc++ ABI was
> meant. There are so many things not in their final shape that I can't
> even imagine that the whole libstdc++ was implied.
Sigh. This should not be news.
Gaby, we were talking about this way back when we were negotiating
the egcs/gcc remerge with Richard Stallman two years ago. The raison
d'etre of 3.0, the reason for the bump in the major version number, was
that it was going to have a stable C++ ABI. Not what the CodeSourcery
document was promising (after all, this was before Mark signed up to be
RM) -- the whole thing, with all that it implies.
Note that http://www.codesourcery.com/cxx-abi/ talks about the multivendor
ABI -- we never signed up, nor should we sign up, to having our library
interoperable with other vendors' libraries.
Now, it may be that this extremely ambitious goal is simply not
achievable, but we cannot honestly pretend that it was not the goal. But
if (or rather, when) we back off from this goal, then I think we need to
see if a subset is achievable (e.g. iostreams) or if more of it is
achievable at a later date (for 3.1, or 3.2 if we switch to a Linux-style
numbering scheme).