[cfe-dev] Should we build semantically invalid nodes?

[Argiris Kirtzidis]

Hey Steve, breaking up Sema is a ridiculous awesome idea!

Here's a thought I'd like to throw around..
Could there be something like "composable Actions" ? The ASTBuilder 
would build the AST while Sema would do semantic checks and reject 
invalid nodes.
This will cleanly separate the semantic checks from the AST building 
and, as you said, will make the code more maintainable.

-Argiris
 

steve naroff wrote:
> Hey Argiris,
>
> Since clang supports multiple "Action" modules, why not have an 
> ASTBuilder class?
>
> My intuition says simply passing in a flag to Sema won't be rich 
> enough. Over time, you would probably need several flags to get Sema 
> to do what you actually want. It just doesn't feel right to me.
>
> On the other hand, AST's produced by an ASTBuilder class could be 
> segregated and managed differently. It gives you much more flexibility 
> to meet the needs of a more "fuzzy" environment (like an IDE), 
> including replacing some of the AST nodes (if the one's were using in 
> Sema aren't ideal). For example, the ASTBuilder class might choose to 
> have "real" (i.e. non-unique types) types (something we've discussed 
> before). Having the ability to get the actual source location for type 
> specifiers seems like a "must have" feature for non-compiler clients.
>
> I believe my suggestion is fairly easy to implement for Stmts/Exprs. 
> It is more difficult to implement for Decls/Types (since 
> Sema::ActOnDeclarator() does some "heavy lifting" to transform a 
> Declarator into a Decl/Type). If this were the only obstacle, we could 
> refactor the code into a Declarator library that both Action modules 
> could share. Since Declarators in C/C++ are very complex, adding a 
> layer might actually improve the maintenance of the code.
>
> I think your desire for more fuzzy AST's is spot on. My only concern 
> is identifying clients for them and choosing an implementation 
> strategy that doesn't disrupt our most central/complex Action module 
> (i.e. Sema). We knew this day would come, which is why the Action 
> interface doesn't force you to use a particular data structure (or any 
> at all).
>
> Thoughts?
>
> snaroff
>
> On Oct 25, 2008, at 4:21 AM, Argiris Kirtzidis wrote:
>
>> Here's an alternative idea:
>> How about we pass a flag at Sema to indicate that Sema should just build
>> the AST without semantic checks ?
>>
>> The meaning of this flag is not that it guarantees that *absolutely no*
>> semantic checks are done, just that the focus is less on semantics and
>> more on getting a complete AST.
>> The Action methods could be modified gradually to check this flag, eg.
>> on Sebastian's patch, if this flag is on, Sema::ActOnCXXCasts will skip
>> the CheckXXXCast call and go to creating the CXXCastExpr directly.
>>
>> This addresses Doug's concerns about allowing invalid nodes while also
>> enabling clients that only care about a full AST.
>>
>> Any thoughts ?
>>
>> -Argiris
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>
>