Re: A FrontEnd in C++?

[Michael Matz <matz@suse.de>]

Hi,

On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Zack Weinberg wrote:

> > It is far from clear that those problems aren't deficiencies in the
> > GCC's own architecture; any project that would make it possible to use
> > the targetted language as an implementation language for front-ends
> > should be highly encouraged IMSHO.
>
> It seems that many people are more sanguine about allowing front ends
> to be written in their own languages than I am.

Although note, that the initial posting wasn't about adding a new frontend
written in it's own language, but simply written in C++, for which we
already have a frontend.  This has not the usual bootstrap problems.
While this doesn't provide the same testing for the new language, the
maintenace burden of this approach is far less.  Yes we (or better the
developer of that frontend) would need to ensure that he's interfacing
correctly with the backend, but that can be done with a rather small C
part, like e.g. Ada does it.


Ciao,
Michael.