Re: Is fastcall broken?

[Andrew Haley <aph-gcc at littlepinkcloud dot COM>]

Daniel Lohmann writes:
 > Andrew Haley schrieb:
 > > Daniel Lohmann writes:
 > >  > Angus schrieb:
 > >  > > 
 > >  > >    BTW, in my opinion it is dangerous. Usually one can rely on
 > >  > > compile or link errors to catch mismatched function
 > >  > > characteristics, but with attributes there is no such
 > >  > > checking. So even if you aren't doing something *really*
 > >  > > dangerous, like working with virtual methods, you might do what I
 > >  > > did, and you'll never know about it until you notice you've
 > >  > > mismatched your attributes. So if you ask me, attributes like
 > >  > > this one should be used sparingly, and with much caution.
 > >  > 
 > >  > I would consider this as a significant defect of gcc's attribute handling. 
 > >  > Attributes that change a function to a non-standard calling convention 
 > >  > effectively modify the interface of the function, which should be encoded 
 > >  > into the (mangled) symbol name. Thereby incompatible prototypes on on the 
 > >  > caller and callee side could be detected at link-time.
 > > 
 > > But attributes such as fastcall are used in C programs, and C doesn't
 > > do mangling.  
 > 
 > But in this cases it should!

C doesn't have type-safe linkage: that is one of its features.  C++ is
for people who like type-safe linkage.

 > > I don't know that many people combine C++ and weirdo attributes
 > > like fastcall.
 > 
 > You would be surprised. C++ is facing an immense popularity gain in the 
 > embedded systems community. And these people (I am one of them...) often 
 > need a much finer control over code generation.

OK.

Andrew.