From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 24062 invoked by alias); 30 Mar 2012 09:45:33 -0000 Received: (qmail 24052 invoked by uid 22791); 30 Mar 2012 09:45:32 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-5.5 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,KHOP_RCVD_UNTRUST,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_HI,RCVD_IN_HOSTKARMA_W,T_RP_MATCHES_RCVD X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (HELO mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr) (192.134.164.105) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Fri, 30 Mar 2012 09:45:14 +0000 Received: from unknown (HELO pluto) ([193.50.110.167]) by mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA; 30 Mar 2012 11:45:11 +0200 From: ludovic.courtes@inria.fr (Ludovic =?iso-8859-1?Q?Court=E8s?=) To: Richard Guenther Cc: gcc@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: Proposed plugin API for GCC References: <1333054687.31165.65.camel@surprise> <87limiqzs6.fsf@inria.fr> X-URL: http://www.fdn.fr/~lcourtes/ X-Revolutionary-Date: 11 Germinal an 220 de la =?iso-8859-1?Q?R=E9volution?= X-PGP-Key-ID: 0xEA52ECF4 X-PGP-Key: http://www.fdn.fr/~lcourtes/ludovic.asc X-PGP-Fingerprint: 83C4 F8E5 10A3 3B4C 5BEA D15D 77DD 95E2 EA52 ECF4 X-OS: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 09:45:00 -0000 In-Reply-To: (Richard Guenther's message of "Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:31:56 +0200") Message-ID: <87ty16mnh4.fsf@inria.fr> User-Agent: Gnus/5.110018 (No Gnus v0.18) Emacs/24.0.93 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org X-SW-Source: 2012-03/txt/msg00524.txt.bz2 Hi Richard, Richard Guenther skribis: > On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 10:23 AM, Ludovic Court=C3=A8s [...] >> 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=E2=80=99m 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 and >> to be stable (it=E2=80=99s been the case in my experience between 4.5 an= d 4.7.) >> The rest can be tagged with a special convention (for instance, an =E2= =80=98i_=E2=80=99 >> prefix), to make it clear that it=E2=80=99s only meant for internal cons= umption. >> >> 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 & co. to do anything meaningful, but at the same time that parts of it are internal and /will/ break eventually. Thanks, Ludo=E2=80=99.