[RFC] type safe trees

[Joe Buck]

On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 11:45:44PM +0200, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
> It is probably harder to first bootstrap a C++ compiler that
> support full ISO C++; but the proposal wasn't to use full C++.
> In fact, I maintain it is hardly harder to bootstrap the subset
> of C++ that appeared in TC++PL1 than C90.

Other than exceptions, there shouldn't be any particular difficulty
in first bootstrapping a new compiler that isn't already present in
C.   So, a requirement that the compiler work with -fno-exceptions
could be imposed.  Beyond that, it doesn't seem that anything else
in the language causes any bootstrap difficulty, as everything else
can be thought of as C code in disguise (remember cfront).

Remember, the existing g++ works just fine as a cross-compiler (meaning
that the whole of libstdc++ can be cross-built), so it seems that
exceptions are the only thing that adds extra hair to getting a native
toolset working.