DATA_ALIGNMENT vs. DECL_USER_ALIGNMENT

[Richard Henderson]

On Thu, Apr 17, 2003 at 04:34:24PM -0400, Richard Kenner wrote:
> But you don't mind if stand-alone objects of that type were
> aligned stricter.

You might.  It depends on what you're doing with that object.
Perhaps it's been put into a special section and so smooshed
into an array created at link time.  Indeed, that's *exactly*
the case that caused us to respect USER_ALIGN in varasm.c at
all costs.

The fact of the matter is that this field is being overloaded
for two meanings:

  (1) The user REALLY DID set the alignment, and expects it to
      be honored exactly as stated, and

  (2) The Ada front end is going about honoring Ada language
      semantics and doesn't want alignment increased in specific
      situations wrt types, but doesn't mind it being increased
      in other situations wrt objects.


r~