[llvm-dev] RFC for f18+runtimes in LLVM

[David Greene via llvm-dev]

"Finkel, Hal J. via llvm-dev" <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> writes:

>     And then there is also the argument for reusing Clang tooling,
>     which David Greene keeps making, though that idea does not seem to
>     get a lot of interest.
>     
>
> I disagree. There's been a lot of interest in modeling Flang's tooling
> after Clang's infrastructure, and refactoring for direct reuse where
> possible. In general, refactoring for code reuse is our default -
> developing similar functionality without reusing existing, related
> code is what, in general, requires specific justification.

My experience with this question has been the same as Petr's.  I keep
asking about it and keep getting radio silence from f18 developers.
Some other people (including Petr) have jumped into the discussion but
frankly, I have not seen a lot of interest in f18 tooling from the f18
developers and I'm very concerned about that.

f18 development so far has been opaque.  There's a biweekly call (which
I'm sure many people such as me simply can't participate in) and meeting
minutes from the calls, but there is really no convenient design
discussion or any other feedback mechanism into the project.  Several
people have tried to discuss reusing bits of clang, but again no
response from the actual developers.

There are Differentials posted for Fortran debug handling in LLVM and
the last update on them was Nov. 28.  As far as I can tell the status on
them is:

https://reviews.llvm.org/D54327 - Looks ready to land, awaiting approval
  from someone.  Who is the someone?

https://reviews.llvm.org/D54043 - Paul Robinson did some groundwork
  to aid the effort.  No updates since.

https://reviews.llvm.org/D54114 - No updates since Nov. 6.  Some
  questions awaiting response.

I know from personal experience how difficult it is to get big changes
approved, so I don't fault the f18 team for the lengthy process to get
these in.  However, D54043 is particularly concerning because we haven't
heard anything on it for a couple of months since a community member
went through some effort to get foundational support in so f18 could
make progress.

This *feels* like a giant code dump to me.  I am sure that's not the
intent of the f18 developers but Steve S. posted his note a few days ago
and there have been plenty of responses...except by the f18 developers.
Given my experience on flang-dev I'm unfortunately not surprised by
this.  There needs to be a lot more community engagement around f18.

I was really excited about the f18 project when it was announced.  I
helped set up a roundtable at LLVMDev for it.  We had some good
discussion.  But that discussion has stopped.  I'm somewhat less excited
about the project now and that's a shame.

                           -David