[LLVMdev] [RFC] Module Flags Metadata

[Bill Wendling]

On Jan 24, 2012, at 1:35 AM, Chandler Carruth wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Bill Wendling <wendling at apple.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> This is a proposal for implementing "module flags". Please take a look at this and give any feedback you may have.
> 
> Thanks!
> -bw
> 

> I have only one real comment -- this violates the contract and spirit of LLVM's metadata design. You're specifically encoding semantics in metadata, but the principle of metadata is that a program with all metadata stripped has the same behavior as one with the metadata still in place.
> 
> I think what you're really talking about are Module-level attributes much like we have function attributes. These have inherently significant semantics, and must be handled explicitly, not simply dropped when unknown.
> 
> Anyways, that's my only real comment about the proposal. I think you need something other than metadata to encode this.

I had thought of that too (and having a module-level attribute scheme), but I was surprised when I found out that named metadata wasn't "strippable" from modules. (You can't strip them via the 'opt' command.) Chris assured me that they were meant to stick around...

-bw