[cfe-dev] prototyping c++ language extensions

[Charllls Alquarra]

>Clang is probably the best environment available to try such a thing. Of
>course, with Clang, you would create a direct compiler instead of a
>source-to-source translator. (My own plans for compile-time reflection will
>also be prototyped in Clang.)

wouldn't it possible to have a default/identity/trivial code generator that produces readable c++ code? The reason i think this is important is than in languages like java annotations change the code at compile time but doesn't necessarily makes that code available for important stuff like debugging for instance. A source-to-source translator would allow an user to check the result of its compile-time metaprograms as c++ code instead of some target that is hard to debug/understand, i've seen some comments on this mailing list that mention source-to-source translators but i'm not sure if they are for extending clang or rather their own projects

>Note, though, that experiments probably won't be accepted back into
>mainline unless they prove themselves.

makes sense