Proposed plugin API for GCC

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Richard,

Richard Guenther <richard.guenther@gmail.com> skribis:

> On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 10:23 AM, Ludovic Courtès

[...]

>> The needs of plug-ins cannot be anticipated; artificially restricting
>> what plug-ins can do is likely to hinder wider extension of GCC.
>
> Extension of GCC should happen within the GCC codebase.  Plugins
> are not a replacement of improving GCC!

Yes, I agree.

However, I’m sure that GCC can be extended in ways that are very
valuable, yet that would not fit in GCC itself for various
administrative or technical reasons.

I find it important to help such unanticipated uses of GCC spread.

>> 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?
>
> Sounds like a stupid idea that does not work

The current situation is that nothing, or everything, is considered
internal, depending on who you ask.  ;-)

The above suggestion would be a recognition that yes, plug-ins /do/ need
<tree.h> & co. to do anything meaningful, but at the same time that
parts of it are internal and /will/ break eventually.

Thanks,
Ludo’.