[jblow]

I don't understand what you are saying here.

Why is it "significantly more brittle"? It is a well-specified interface. It is less brittle than talking over a socket because the kinds of points of failure involved with sockets don't exist in this case.

> And it can't be spec'd with a schema that isn't just "read the headers."

What does that even mean? It's a protocol just like any protocol, except you get the added benefit that for many languages it can be typechecked. Why are you claiming it can't be specified or that someone has to "read the headers"? What headers?

[dikaiosune]

From your endorsement of "using the compiler's symbol tables" (paraphrasing) I took you to mean that you're proposing binding directly to GCC (or another tool) as a library, relying on it's internal data structures as this C API. Based on this comment, it sounds like you're now suggesting that this API should still be standardized and require translating from the compiler's internals into some standardized AST/symbol format anyways. I still think the latter is bonkers for several reasons (SIGABRT being one), but it's significantly less bonkers than what I had thought you were proposing initially.

[teacup50]

> I still think the latter is bonkers for several reasons (SIGABRT being one)...

The fact that we're typing this, and it works -- without the entire world falling apart because of crashes in complex library code -- demonstrates why this is not remotely bonkers.