Re: -fdump-translation-unit considered harmful

[Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr at integrable-solutions dot net>]

"Dams, Dennis (Dennis)" <dennis@research.bell-labs.com> writes:

|  
| 
| > -----Original Message-----
| > From: gdr@integrable-solutions.net 
| > [mailto:gdr@integrable-solutions.net] 
| > Sent: Friday, May 13, 2005 12:33 PM
| > To: Adam Nemet
| > Cc: Ian Lance Taylor; Dams, Dennis (Dennis); gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org
| > Subject: Re: -fdump-translation-unit considered harmful
| > 
| > Adam Nemet <anemet@lnxw.com> writes:
| > 
| > | Ian Lance Taylor <ian@airs.com> writes:
| > | > -fdump-translation-unit doesn't do anything in the C frontend.
| > | 
| > | Is the patch below OK to update documentation accordingly?  Tested 
| > | with make info and make dvi.
| > 
| > OK.
| > 
| > Thanks,
| > 
| > -- Gaby
| >
| 
| Have there been any new thoughts/developments on the issue of
| elevating the current dump facilities (-fdump-translation-unit, and
| the -fdump-tree functionality) to a more formal API? 

Not that I'm aware of.

Although I understand the utility of this flag, I do believe it is
premature and probably not well suited to define any formal API at
this point. 

[...]

| It would be great if this behavior could be made part of the current
| GCC release. But it would be even better if there could be some
| prior agreement, among those who would be interested, about what a
| reasonable tree-dump format should look like. 

I have gone over several formats for improved debugging information,
but I think we still need more experience.  At any case, it would not
be something that will have a formal API.  I consider it to be a
debugging aid; I would hate to be distracted from technical issues
into political matters.

-- Gaby