Proposed plugin API for GCC

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

David Malcolm <dmalcolm@redhat.com> skribis:

> How do other plugin authors feel about the API?

I think this approach would lead to a duplication of each GCC API.

The needs of plug-ins cannot be anticipated; artificially restricting
what plug-ins can do is likely to hinder wider extension of GCC.

As an example, when Emacs was written, probably nobody expected that
email and IRC clients would be written in it; likewise, probably most of
the projects at <http://llvm.org/ProjectsWithLLVM/> were not anticipated.


What about sticking to the current “API” instead, and explicitly marking
as internal those parts that core developers know are still in flux?

For instance, I would expect a large subset of <tree.h> and <cgraph.h>
to be stable (it’s been the case in my experience between 4.5 and 4.7.)
The rest can be tagged with a special convention (for instance, an ‘i_’
prefix), to make it clear that it’s only meant for internal consumption.

WDYT?

Thanks,
Ludo’.