RFC: Java inliner

[Mark Mitchell]

--On Tuesday, June 11, 2002 04:46:38 PM +0100 Andrew Haley 
<aph@cambridge.redhat.com> wrote:

> Fergus Henderson writes:
>  > On 11-Jun-2002, Andrew Haley <aph@cambridge.redhat.com> wrote:
>  > > I intend to work on a Java specific tree inliner.
>  > >
>  > > Comments?
>  >
>  > I doubt we'll get a real language-independent AST inliner soon
>  > if everyone who could benefit from it decides that it will be easier
>  > for them to build their own language-specific tree inliner instead ;-)
>
> I take your point!
>
> However, at the moment Java doesn't have an inliner of any kind, so...

The right thing to do is clear: convert the Java front end to use trees
that are more like the C/C++ trees.  (C++ is C plus some C++-specific
extensions; I expect you want C plus some Java-specific extensions.)
Then, use the existing inliner.

Anything else leads to greater incompatibility between the front ends,
and, as such, constitutes a step in distinctly the wrong direction.

This really should not be hard; the Java source language looks very
much like the C/C++ source language.  The control-flow constructs are
very similar.

I know that some of the Java developers think that the Java front end's
representation is superior.  That's a fine opinion to have, and maybe
switching the C/C++ front end to the Java representation is OK too -- but
that's a lot more work.  The Java representation certainly isn't
sufficiently more superior to justify that.

-- 
Mark Mitchell                mark@codesourcery.com
CodeSourcery, LLC            http://www.codesourcery.com