[LLVMdev] Dynamic configuration for llvmc2

[Patrick Walton]

On Nov 17, 2008, at 11:16 AM, Anton Korobeynikov <anton at korobeynikov.info 
 > wrote:

> Hello, Patrick
>
>> Basically, my concern with TableGen is that a lot of work has gone  
>> into
>> creating a small domain-specific scripting language in TableGen, when
>> maybe a real scripting language would be easier to use (not to  
>> mention
>> to maintain), and would have the added benefit of not having to  
>> recompile.
> One of the main design concerns is that llvmc2 should be completely
> self-hosted. No extra perl/python/lua/php/whatever_language_your_know
> interpreter. Thus is generated c++ sources from .td descriptions.

Why is this though? It doesn't seem to me that creating a new domain- 
specific language buys us much if anything over using a well-tested,  
small embedded language. I keep hitting bugs in the llvmc2 TableGen  
implementation. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it looks to me like  
TableGen was never really intended to be a programming language, which  
is what llvmc2 uses it as in some cases.

Patrick