[LLVMdev] RFC: Machine Level IR text-based serialization format

[Alex L]

2015-04-28 11:09 GMT-07:00 Bevin Hansson <bevinh at sics.se>:

> On 2015-04-28 19:14, Quentin Colombet wrote:
>
>> Personally I would rather not have to write YAML inputs but instead
>> resort on the what the machine dumps look like. That being said, I can
>> live with YAML :).
>>
>>
> YAML is what is suggested in the FIXME for the textual Machine IR, so
> that might be the motivation behind Alex's choice.
>
> I sort of agree that it could be better to go with a "proprietary"
> format based off of the dumps. This means that a dedicated Machine
> IR parser could be implemented for the purposes of library users who
> want to open the files. I also think that the dumps are much easier
> to diff and read.
>
> There are parts of the suggested YAML format that seem to require some
> parsing anyway, like the instruction strings. If YAML is going to be used,
> I think it would be better to let the instructions be encoded in YAML
> instead of leaving them as a string, if that makes sense.
>
> / Bevin


Initially I was thinking about developing a text-based format that's not
based on YAML, but is closer in spirit to the LLVM IR. However, I found
that a structured format like YAML lends itself quite well to the machine
level IR. At the same time the instructions themselves don't work that well
with YAML, thus I decided on this hybrid approach. Therefore I don't
think that instructions should be in YAML, as they would just get too
verbose.

I understand that a non YAML format has its own advantages and may be
preferred by the majority. If the community decides that another format is
better,
I would be happy to work on that.

Alex.
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