[LLVMdev] C Backend's future

[Chris Lattner]

On Nov 15, 2010, at 9:22 AM, John Criswell wrote:
> On 11/15/10 11:17 AM, David A. Greene wrote:
>> Duncan Sands<baldrick at free.fr>  writes:
>> 
>>>> 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.
>> That would actually be better.  I've never tried the interpreter.  Do
>> you have a sense of what's needed to make it more powerful?
> 
> Are you sure that this is a good idea?  The interpreter (if it is made 
> to work) will probably be much, much slower than the C backend.
> 
> Since both the interpreter and the CBE need some love and care to work 
> again, it may be better to exert effort on the CBE.

If anyone was really interested in this, I'd strongly suggest a complete rewrite of the C backend: make use the existing target independent code generator code (for legalization etc) and then just put out a weird ".s file" at the end.

-Chris