[LLVMdev] C Backend's future

[Daniel Dunbar]

IMHO, we should keep the C backend. It still has value, in particular
someone may come along and fix it up. I agree with Chris' earlier
point that there is little value in ripping it out, aside from users
being confused when it doesn't work.

Of course, a rewrite would be nice too...

 - Daniel

On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 10:06 AM, Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com> wrote:
> 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
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