Re: [RFC] WHOPR - A whole program optimizer framework for GCC

[Tim Josling <tejgcc at westnet dot com dot au>]

On Thu, 2007-12-13 at 08:27 -0500, Diego Novillo wrote:
> On 12/13/07 2:39 AM, Ollie Wild wrote:
> 
> > The lto branch is already doing this, so presumably that discussion
> > was resolved (Maybe someone in the know should pipe up.).
> 
> Yes, streaming the IL to/from disk is a resolved issue.
> ...
> 
> Diego.

I found this thread
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2005-11/msg00735.html

>> From: Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>
>> To: gcc mailing list <gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org>
>> Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 14:26:28 -0800
>> Subject: Link-time optimzation

________________________________________________________________________
>> The GCC community has talked about link-time optimization for some time.
>> ...
>> We would prefer not to have this thread devolve into a discussion about
>> legal and "political" issues relating to reading and writing GCC's
>> internal representation.  I've said publicly for a couple of years that
>> GCC would need to have this ability, and, more constructively, David
>> Edelsohn has talked with the FSF (both RMS and Eben Moglen) about it.
>> The FSF has indicated that GCC now can explore adding this feature,
>> although there are still some legal details to resolve.

>> ...
>>  http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/lto/lto.pdf
>> ... 

Was there any more about this?

I have restarted work on my COBOL front end. Based on my previous
experiences writing a GCC front end I want to have as little code as
possible in the same process as the GCC back end. 

This means passing over a file. So I would like to understand how to
avoid getting into political/legal trouble when doing this.

Thanks,
Tim Josling