On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 10:23 AM, Ludovic Courtès <ludovic.cour...@inria.fr> wrote: > Hi, > > David Malcolm <dmalc...@redhat.com> skribis: > >> How do other plugin authors feel about the API? > > I think this approach would lead to a duplication of each GCC API.
I would call it an abstraction of GCC internals (disclaimer: I did not look at the proposed API). This abstraction should be easier to learn and easier to use for 99% of the plugin users. And it should offer a stable abstraction ABI that makes plugins interoperate with different GCC versions without recompiling. > 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! > As an example, when Emacs was written, probably nobody expected that > email and IRC clients would be written in it; likewise, probably most of > the projects at <http://llvm.org/ProjectsWithLLVM/> were not anticipated. > > > What about sticking to the current “API” instead, and explicitly marking > as internal those parts that core developers know are still in flux? That's not possible. And it is not wanted. > For instance, I would expect a large subset of <tree.h> and <cgraph.h> > to be stable (it’s been the case in my experience between 4.5 and 4.7.) > The rest can be tagged with a special convention (for instance, an ‘i_’ > prefix), to make it clear that it’s only meant for internal consumption. > > WDYT? Sounds like a stupid idea that does not work (yes, plugins that want to do everything an embedded part of GCC can do are stupid). Richard. > Thanks, > Ludo’. >
