[llvm-dev] RFC: metadata attachments for global variables

[Adrian Prantl via llvm-dev]

You have my full support! I actually started implementing this to fix the problem outlined in http://reviews.llvm.org/D18109, but then was side-tracked by some ThinLTO work. I’ve attached my early stage WIP patch to the D18109, in case you are interested in looking at it and/or picking up from there. There are some interesting challenges, such as the fact that we need to support more than one !dbg attachement per global and the need to replace constants in the global field with DIExpressions that I haven’t tackled yet.

-- adrian


> On May 6, 2016, at 1:17 PM, Peter Collingbourne via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I'd like to add support for metadata attachments for global variables in the same way as we did for functions.
> 
> Syntax would be pretty simple:
> @foo = global i32 0, !foo !0, !bar !1
> (the extra commas are required to disambiguate from a named metadata on the next line)
> 
> Benefits:
> 1) Lets us reverse the DIGlobalVariable -> GlobalVariable edge, which should hopefully clear the way for removing the llvm.dbg.cu named metadata node.
> 
> 2) Allows for bitset metadata to be attached to globals rather than being represented as a named metadata node. This means that bitset metadata is naturally dropped when globals are dropped, and makes it easier to manipulate bitset metadata and build summaries of bitset definitions.
> 
> Comments appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> -- 
> -- 
> Peter
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