From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 32075 invoked by alias); 7 Mar 2003 23:02:13 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org Received: (qmail 32051 invoked from network); 7 Mar 2003 23:02:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO monkey.daikokuya.co.uk) (213.152.55.49) by 172.16.49.205 with SMTP; 7 Mar 2003 23:02:12 -0000 Received: from neil by monkey.daikokuya.co.uk with local (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian)) id 18rQqL-00062g-00; Fri, 07 Mar 2003 23:01:33 +0000 Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 23:07:00 -0000 From: Neil Booth To: Geoff Keating Cc: per@bothner.com, tromey@redhat.com, gcc@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: Putting C++ code into gcc front end Message-ID: <20030307230133.GF31657@daikokuya.co.uk> References: <3E64C09A.9070500@comsys.se> <87isuzjb71.fsf@fleche.redhat.com> <3E67FBA6.1000907@bothner.com> <20030307125056.GA23848@gauvain.u-strasbg.fr> <20030307202316.GD31657@daikokuya.co.uk> <20030307222021.GE31657@daikokuya.co.uk> <200303072250.h27MoK706172@desire.geoffk.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200303072250.h27MoK706172@desire.geoffk.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.3i X-SW-Source: 2003-03/txt/msg00544.txt.bz2 Geoff Keating wrote:- > > Every front end should have it's own representation, which should be > > lowered to something common like GIMPLE that is simple, well- > > documented, and yet expressive enough to be useful to everyone. I > > feel we can't make real progress any other way. Imagine how > > maintainable each front-end having its own high-level IR with real > > distinct C structs and unions would be. > > Well... When I tried to imagine, I started thinking "and, yes, we > could have completely different representations for exceptions and > structures and references and function calls between the C, C++, Ada, > and Java frontends" which didn't sound quite so great. After all, > another project which is also a good idea and not making much progress > recently is to commonize more of the C and C++ frontends. Clearly things that are similar should have some kind of similar, or common base specification. But C++ has little in common with Fortran; forcing them to use the same "stuff" as a high level representation is clearly a loser. IMO other telling signs of deep design problems is the middle end telling the front end how to manage its symbol table: that's basically what all the decl langhooks are about. I think your point has more merit for a mid-level representation, like I intimated in my post. > Maybe a better solution would be to document what the tree structure > is actually supposed to look like, and then try to ensure that? I'm not willing to spend (a truly huge) amount of time on something I don't think is the way forwards. Particularly as I'm not being paid for it. Neil.