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by pcwalton
3549 days ago
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Effort in this direction would be better spent just adding new features to clang (or GCC). It'll be so much easier than writing a new parser and semantic analysis for C++, which you will have to do if you want the new feature to behave properly in the presence of templates, etc. You'll end up wanting to just use clang's front end to help you, like most C++ tools do—and at that point why not just modify clang itself? People bring up obscure platforms (though, interestingly, I can't recall anybody actually naming one of those platforms) all the time as motivation for compiling to C. But if you really need to do that, you can always revive the LLVM C backend. The fact that nobody has bothered to revive it and keep it up to date enough to be merged into LLVM proper, to me, is a strong indication that few people need support for these obscure platforms. |
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In your opinion. This isn't a fact. For example, I know first hand of code that has to compile with compilers that are not in the set { gcc, clang, msvc }. What do I do then? (Oh, and those compilers are closed-source).
> You'll end up wanting to just use clang's front end to help you
Probably, although there are other options too
> and at that point why not just modify clang itself?
The changes I make, if useful to the community, would probably end up back in clang. But they would also remain a separate tool, because of all those other pesky compilers I work with.
> you can always revive the LLVM C backend
I'm not sure how that helps me; not only does it seem a terribly roundabout way to get what I'm looking for (instead of sugar -> c++ -> my c++ compiler, you are proposing sugar -> clang -> llvm -> c -> my c compiler), but I don't think objects produced by that pipeline would link with C++ objects produced from my native compilers, among other issues.
> The fact that nobody has bothered to revive it and keep it up to date enough to be merged into LLVM proper, to me, is a strong indication that few people need support for these obscure platforms.
Or, is it evidence that people using more obscure platforms (we're talking fortune 500 companies here) stick to languages that exist on their platforms for various reasons?