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Re: Exporting structure layout
- From: Joe Buck <Joe dot Buck at synopsys dot COM>
- To: Ian Lance Taylor <ian at airs dot com>
- Cc: Florian Weimer <fw at deneb dot enyo dot de>, gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 13:54:57 -0700
- Subject: Re: Exporting structure layout
- References: <87d5rx4rzu.fsf@deneb.enyo.de> <m3psvxqyw2.fsf@gossamer.airs.com>
> Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> writes:
>
> > Are there any objections to exporting structure layout from GCC, in a
> > format which can be parsed in a straightforward manner? Such a patch
> > could be used as a GPL circumvention device, but I'm not sure how
> > relevant this is in practice because GCC follows published ABIs, so a
> > clean-room reimplementation would be straightforward (IOW, there isn't
> > much to lose for us because our competetive edge is pretty minimal).
On Wed, May 11, 2005 at 04:41:01PM -0400, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> You can extract this information directly from the debugging output
> anyhow. I can't see how anybody would object to this on GPL
> circumvention grounds.
Agreed; it's in the debug information as well as in ABI specs. There
would similarly be no problem in dumping other types of declarations, or
cross-reference data. We (or rather, the FSF) only have an issue when the
dump becomes a complete representation of the program, suitable (after
data conversion, maybe) for a foreign back end.