Exporting structure layout

[Joe Buck]

> 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.