IDE projects are an example of development that could make good use of a
plugin that might never be integrated in the
compiler, indeed shouldn't ever be integrated in the compiler.
Terrence Miller
Richard Guenther wrote:
Basile STARYNKEVITCH wrote:
Terrence Miller wrote:
I think this debate is missing one important issue. In order to generate a
patch to GCC
you have to know a lot more about the compiler internals than is required
to create
a plugin. I am doing some casual experimentation with compiler based
source browsing
and would love to have the DECL event(described below) added to the plugin
API.
I would prefer to not have to figure where that plugin should be called.
It is perhaps true for the DECL event you are talking about (which I did not
understood fully), but I won't say that coding a plugin is *in general*
easier than proposing a patch to core GCC.
My perception is that most *middle* end plugins are working on Gimple and
other middle-end representations. Usually, they do that by adding a pass in
the pass machinery. And knowing what pass to add (or replace) is as
difficult when coding a plugin than when coding a patch to GCC core.
Conversely, I would suspect than many previous patches (which have now bee
incorporated in GCC core) could have if a plugin machinery have been
available at their time (which is false since plugin facilities is just
coming in 4.5 which has not yet been released), first been developped as
plugins -at least to experiment their viability & interest- and later one
proposed as a patch.
This is why I believe that plugins will probably -at least for middle-end
processing- have also the role of GCC branches today, with a very important
difference. Almost nobody compiles branches today (in the general GCC user
community - I am not talking of the smaller GCC developper community), and
it could be the case that some plugins will be used.
For example, as far as I know, no common Linux distribution provides a
package for any kind of GCC branch. I believe (perhaps I am too optimistic)
that some Linux distributions will package some few GCC plugins.
You keep re-iterating this (IMHO bogus) argument. I don't see how a plugin
in development is any different here - nobody will build or distribute it.
OTOH after a branch is mature it will be merged into the GCC core, so it
will be immediately available in distributed GCCs.
Richard.
