From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stan Shebs To: Ira Ruben Cc: gcc@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: Target-specific Front-Ends? (Was: front end changes for altivec) Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 09:48:00 -0000 Message-ID: <3C03D1CD.CE56AD7@apple.com> References: <339DE634-E2DE-11D5-A770-0030658361CA@apple.com> <3C033117.F8EDD78A@apple.com> X-SW-Source: 2001-11/msg01357.html Message-ID: <20011127094800.ZFjKD8or04jishIcfkAgEwmtIUnfq3BCU2BaNz9GqlQ@z> Ira Ruben wrote: > > >There were some real boners, > >such as the context sensitivity of the vector keyword, that I think > >could have been avoided if some GCC folks had participated. > > At the time the AltiVec language model was being designed gcc was > never in the picture -- period! The only "players" were MrC[pp] and > Moto's Mcc (not even MW). I'm not sure what prompted Moto to try to > later retrofit the design into gcc. Easy - Motorola wasn't going to be able to sell G4s to either Linux or embedded users (VxWorks etc) without having AltiVec support in GCC. It speaks volumes that nobody at Motorola seemed to be aware that GCC was Wind River's standard compiler, and that it thus might be a good idea to talk to GCC people about the proposed extension. > And I don't consider the use of > "vector" as a context-sensitive keyword a "real boner". THAT WAS MY > DECISION/DESIGN! I wasn't going to mention your name, but if you want to take credit I can't stop you... :-) > For MrC[pp] is was easy to do. And it was based on > feedback from our internal (Apple) AltiVec users (the *only* users at > that time other than Moto). They didn't want to write __vector and > they certainly couldn't tolerate "vector" being a macro that expanded > to __vector (which Moto was proposing). And "vector" couldn't be > treated as an unconditional reserved word either. Nevertheless, I still think it was a mistake. When it comes to messing with the language, we often need to say "no" to users, who typically don't understand the consequences of tinkering with language syntax and semantics - indeed, they're paying us to be the experts. While it may have been easy to do in MrC, did anybody consider that the extension was going to affect every other PowerPC compiler in the world? Ironically, this extension makes our internal version of GCC more complicated and time-consuming to merge with FSF sources, so our imports take longer and have more problems, which means that your own daily work today has been made more difficult by the expedient choice of several years ago. Stan