On Wed, Nov 16, 2022 at 08:41:06AM +0100, Jan Beulich wrote: > On 16.11.2022 00:54, Andrew Cooper wrote: > > On 15/11/2022 16:44, Jan Beulich wrote: > >> I think we need to settle on at least halfway firm rules on when to use > >> synthetic feature bits and when to use plain global booleans. Without > >> that the tastes of the three of us are going to collide again every once > >> in a while. > > > > Its very easy. All other things being equal, synthetic features are the > > most efficient option. > > See Roger's better wording of "why use a more complicated construct when > a simple one will do". Yes, generated code may be better in certain cases, > but no, we don't always judge by that aspect alone. Source simplicity is > an important criteria, which at other times I recall you also weighing > higher than the performance of resulting code (especially when dealing > with performance aspects when they don't really matter at most/all use > sites of whichever construct).
I think it would be easier if we can discuss this in one of our x86 related meetings. It's still unclear to me why a synthetic feature would be preferred rather than a global variable in most cases (like the one here, even if the variable didn't end up having the __init attribute). Thanks, Roger.
