[RFC] Switching implementation language to C++

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Mon, 31 May 2010, Basile Starynkevitch wrote:

> I would even imagine that later, one could configure GCC to have only a
> C++ front-end, but no more a C one. That probably would be unusual,
> since many important applications which want to be compiled by GCC (I am
> thinking of the Linux kernel) will continue to exist in C. But I would
> believe that a future GCC with only a C++ frontend and without a C
> frontend would be possible, and be able to bootstrap (i.e. make stage3),
> which is not true today. IIRC, today's GCC (i.e. 4.5) cannot even be
> configured to have a C++ front-end without having a C front-end. Do we
> want to change that?

I believe it would be a bad idea to change GCC's language-independent 
runtime libraries (libgcc etc.) and libraries for ObjC, Fortran etc. to 
use C++.  As such, building the C compiler will continue to be required in 
order to build those libraries.  (It should also continue to be possible 
to build a cross compiler that only supports C - using, of course, 
pre-installed build-x-build and build-x-host C++ compilers - rather than 
requiring C++ support to be built for the target; the requirement to build 
a C++ host-x-target compiler will only apply for native bootstrap.)

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com