[cfe-dev] Module progress?

[Thomas Young]

 > > How can we help?
 >
 > Modules is a big feature, and there are a few places where one could 
help. Some ideas:

The diagnostics, fix-its and tracking unused imports points really seem 
like they would just be icing on the cake.

Speaking for myself, for diagnostics and fixits at least, I'd be very 
happy for something that works in the case where there are no errors, 
(in the sense that in finishes compilation and generates the desired 
object file result), but falls back to the 'traditional' compilation 
model in case of errors (so with diagnostics and fixits then being 
generated as necessary by existing code for this).

(I find that most of the time spent compiling is for compilation without 
errors. When changing stuff that can introduce errors I tend to be 
working with just one object file, or unit test, directly, and then 
compilation times are much less of an issue.)



 >  - Improve the 'modularize' tool I hacked up (sources attached), 
which attempts to find non-modular behavior in a set of header files.

Right, this kind of tooling definitely seems like it can be quite 
important. (Although I'd still be very happy to see modules working 
without this feature!)

As a first step, I guess it could be nice to have some kind of feedback 
to tell us at least where we violated the modular header 
assumptions/constraints. Perhaps one way to do this could then be to 
have an extra compile mode that performs both traditional and modular 
compilation in parallel, and tells you as soon as these diverge? (at 
whatever level of granularity, e.g. with checks after each module import 
would be fine to start with).

Best regards,

Thomas