[LLVMdev] C Backend's future

[Duncan Sands]

Hi Dave,

>>> I'm wondering what the longer term plans are for the C Backend. I
>>> understand it's not actively developed, even deprecated. What I'm not
>>> clear about is whether it's something that is viewed as non-vital and
>>> should just as well go away, or if it's just a low
>>> priority. Basically: it's not improving, but is it likely to
>>> disappear?
>>
>> I don't know of anyone actively working on it, and that means it isn't likely to improve anytime soon.
>
> I have quite a few patches for it queued up.  Vector code is a problem
> since the C backend currently generates aligned vector loads of
> unaligned data.
>
>> In short, I don't see a compelling reason to rip it out anytime soon.
>> If it ends up being completely broken for simple programs, it might
>> make sense to remove in the future.
>
> There's a big reason to keep it.  It's a godsend when trying to bugpoint
> something where no working llc is available.  I've used it quite a lot
> during AVX development, for example.  It's useful for developing any
> new target.

an alternative is to make the interpreter more powerful and have bugpoint
use it rather than the C backend.

Ciao,

Duncan.