On 02/09/15 22:44, David Kunsman wrote:
Hello, I just read over the incremental compiler project on the gcc wiki...and I am excited to try to finish it. I am just wondering if it is even wanted anymore because it is 7-8 years old. Does anybody know if this project is wanted anymore?
The overall goal of the project is worthwhile, however, it is unclear whether the approach envisioned in the wiki page will lead to the desired benefits. See http://tromey.com/blog/?p=420 which is the last status report that I am aware of. In addition to that, the implementation itself would already be incredibly challenging for anyone with many years of experience in GCC.
I do not wish to discourage you, perhaps you will manage to pull it off. On the bright side, GCC has improved a lot since 2008 and there are many new improvements that will probably make the incremental compiler easier to implement today, such as binding-oracle in libcc1, global state removal by libgccjit, recent modularization work, etc.
If you have never submitted any changes to GCC, I will strongly recommend that you start with something small and immediately useful such as any of the EasyHacks (https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/EasyHacks). Then, move to something more complex and related to the incremental compiler, but still self-contained such as "The C front end has been modified to lex the entire file at once". This would be useful on its own since it is likely to speed-up the C FE (and it is what C++ already does).
Cheers, Manuel.
