Re: [RFC] database with API information

[Iain Sandoe <idsandoe@googlemail.com>]

> On 7 Sep 2022, at 13:33, Martin Liška <mliska@suse.cz> wrote:
> 
> On 9/7/22 12:56, Richard Sandiford via Gcc wrote:
>> Ulrich Drepper via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> writes:
>>> I talked to Jonathan the other day about adding all the C++ library APIs to
>>> the name hint file now that the size of the table is not really a concern
>>> anymore.
>>> 
>>> Jonathan mentioned that he has to create and maintain a similar file for
>>> the module support.  It needs to list all the exported interfaces and this
>>> is mostly a superset of the entries in the hint table.
>>> 
>>> Instead of duplicating the information it should be kept in one place.
>>> Neither file itself is a natural fit because the additional information
>>> needed  (e.g., the standard version information for the name hint table) is
>>> not needed in the other location.
>>> 
>>> Hence, let's use a simple database, a CSV file for simplicity, and generate
>>> both files from this.  Easily done, I have an appropriate script and a CSV
>>> file with the information of both Jonathan's current export file and the
>>> current state of the name hint table.
>>> 
>>> The only detail that keeps me from submitting this right now is the way the
>>> script is implemented.  This is just a natural fit for a Python script.
>>> The default installation comes with a csv module and there are nice ways to
>>> adjust and output boilerplate headers like those needed in those files.
>>> 
>>> It would be possible to create separate awk scripts (there is only one
>>> Python script) but it'll be rather ugly and harder to maintain than the
>>> Python version.
>>> 
>>> Of course the problem is: I don't think that there is yet any maintainer
>>> tool written in Python (except some release engineering tools).  The
>>> question is therefore: is it time to lift this restriction?  I cannot today
>>> imagine any machine capable of serving a gcc developer which doesn't also
>>> have a Python implementation.  As long as there is no dependency on exotic
>>> modules I doubt that anything will break.
>> 
>> FWIW, I agree it's past time to lift the no-Python restriction,
>> and that Python is a natural fit for stuff like this.

( no objection to using Python here )

One small request, I realise that Python 2 is dead, but I regularly bootstrap GCC
on older machines that only have Python 2 installations.  If possible (and it sounds
plausible if the job is really quite simple) - it would be good to support those older
machines without having to take a detour to find a way to build Python 3 on them first.

Iain