From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Joseph S. Myers" Newsgroups: gmane.comp.gcc.devel,gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: clang and FSF's strategy Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2014 18:21:13 +0000 Message-ID: References: <20140121201949.21DE1380522@snark.thyrsus.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1390501310 17462 80.91.229.3 (23 Jan 2014 18:21:50 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2014 18:21:50 +0000 (UTC) Cc: "Eric S. Raymond" , , To: Alexandre Oliva Original-X-From: gcc-return-181689-gcc=m.gmane.org@gcc.gnu.org Thu Jan 23 19:21:56 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcc@plane.gmane.org Original-Received: from server1.sourceware.org ([209.132.180.131] helo=sourceware.org) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1W6OuY-0006ko-SC for gcc@plane.gmane.org; Thu, 23 Jan 2014 19:21:55 +0100 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gcc.gnu.org; h=list-id :list-unsubscribe:list-archive:list-post:list-help:sender:date :from:to:cc:subject:in-reply-to:message-id:references :mime-version:content-type; q=dns; s=default; b=dTrOwatYADfiDV2E eRBuSZDrs9is75GDIU9hVbcIOx9kx4+dfiCesQljr8mlxmJO9FFcUM82iN5FHEWR ui9FCJLM/zxSzPBlg0iAqQgYmySzEuG/xn3LzoJj48RWVrLcaY3y5+N4J6fjUptM ONml90kPJO7NB5E1NGrZ6CfP9VE= DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed; d=gcc.gnu.org; h=list-id :list-unsubscribe:list-archive:list-post:list-help:sender:date :from:to:cc:subject:in-reply-to:message-id:references :mime-version:content-type; s=default; bh=BWmtUNcOlNtWvFe0UEx7Dg RJBNA=; b=FmT7frU/0eaOXGvUdUN0LQ61z1ccIVZPUi9x5TYzvVNxsRGVmzKQxJ TDtdkhXKmGBODw1ENrQQ2/MzvS32Wb75wTSQOuKZu0gcquonrpkV5CWXKyM8G7z0 fVXSTXG4MWh1rHsjfrsvuwovY6IK7oiaQQAhFzrc9d79CC7I6/34U= Original-Received: (qmail 3381 invoked by alias); 23 Jan 2014 18:21:50 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Original-Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org Original-Received: (qmail 3366 invoked by uid 89); 23 Jan 2014 18:21:49 -0000 Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; auth=none X-Virus-Found: No X-Spam-SWARE-Status: No, score=-2.0 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.3.2 X-HELO: relay1.mentorg.com Original-Received: from relay1.mentorg.com (HELO relay1.mentorg.com) (192.94.38.131) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.93/v0.84-503-g423c35a) with ESMTP; Thu, 23 Jan 2014 18:21:22 +0000 Original-Received: from svr-orw-fem-01.mgc.mentorg.com ([147.34.98.93]) by relay1.mentorg.com with esmtp id 1W6Otx-00073S-Hh from joseph_myers@mentor.com ; Thu, 23 Jan 2014 10:21:17 -0800 Original-Received: from SVR-IES-FEM-01.mgc.mentorg.com ([137.202.0.104]) by svr-orw-fem-01.mgc.mentorg.com over TLS secured channel with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675); Thu, 23 Jan 2014 10:21:17 -0800 Original-Received: from digraph.polyomino.org.uk (137.202.0.76) by SVR-IES-FEM-01.mgc.mentorg.com (137.202.0.104) with Microsoft SMTP Server id 14.2.247.3; Thu, 23 Jan 2014 18:21:14 +0000 Original-Received: from jsm28 (helo=localhost) by digraph.polyomino.org.uk with local-esmtp (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1W6Ott-0003Ld-LB; Thu, 23 Jan 2014 18:21:13 +0000 In-Reply-To: Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.comp.gcc.devel:134133 gmane.emacs.devel:168974 Archived-At: On Tue, 21 Jan 2014, Alexandre Oliva wrote: > On Jan 21, 2014, esr@thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) wrote: > > > I think it is time to question whether the anti-plugins policy is > > still the best way to accomplish this. > > Err... Excuse me, but what anti-plugins policy are you talking about? Indeed. There are people working right now on improvements to modularity in GCC, elimination of global state, and support for use of GCC in a JIT library, led by Andrew MacLeod and David Malcolm. Contributions to those sorts of efforts (and to the plugin interface) are more useful than rhetoric. No policy objections are being made to these patches, it's simply a matter of the work involved. If people want suggestions that don't conflict with what Andrew and David are working on, a couple of suggestions: * We have about 700 target macros (my script lists 697 right now, but there are likely some false positives, and maybe false negatives), all of which should move to the hooks mechanism to enable multiple targets to be supported in a single compiler binary, and to get other benefits such as not having the build of GCC fail with warnings seen only for some targets because of differences in the target macro definitions. I expect a large proportion of these (not used in #if or in code built for the target, etc.) could be converted to hooks using some form of script-based automatic refactoring, possibly with manual fine-tuning of the resulting patches. * Andrew MacLeod's plans for improving static typing are I think largely about the middle end - there is plenty of scope for improving static typing of datastructures used in the front ends, and cleanly separating them from the language-independent compiler as far as possible. -- Joseph S. Myers joseph@codesourcery.com