[cfe-dev] Move VTableContext & friends from AST to CodeGen?

[Timur Iskhodzhanov]

Anders,
Thanks for the historic insight!

Looks like here are the discussion and the commit:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.clang.scm/36181
http://llvm.org/viewvc/llvm-project?view=revision&revision=140510

Peter,
Do you know if PathScale is still working on a WHIRL backend for clang?
  (I believe this was the main rationale for the move to AST)
What exactly do they need to have in AST?
Do they only support one C++ ABI?

--
Timur

2013/5/15 Anders Carlsson <andersca at icloud.com>:
> Hi Timur,
>
> VTableBuilder actually started its life inside CodeGen, but was moved to AST because someone wanted to be able to use the clang fronted with a non-LLVM backend.
>
> I forget the exact details, but I'm pretty sure you can dig through svn or mailing list history and find out.
>
> - Anders
>
> On May 15, 2013, at 5:32 AM, Timur Iskhodzhanov <timurrrr at google.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Anders, John,
>>
>> Is there any reason for AST/VTableBuilder.{h,cpp} to be in AST?
>>
>> I think these classes are only used in CodeGen.
>> Here is an approximate list of files that use VTableContext,
>> VTableLayout and VTableComponent:
>>  CGClass.cpp
>>  CGCXX.cpp
>>  CGCXXABI.cpp
>>  CGDebugInfo.cpp
>>  CGExprConstant.cpp
>>  CGExprCXX.cpp
>>  CGRTTI.cpp
>>  CGVTables.cpp
>>  CGVTT.cpp
>>  CodeGenModule.h
>>
>> The reason I'm asking is because the current code layout makes it
>> harder to add support for Microsoft ABI vftables.
>>
>> Instead of having a single vtable with address points for non-primary
>> bases (like in Itanium ABI), in Microsoft ABI we need to use a
>> separate vftable builder for each base with a vfptr.
>> Thus, we need to define these tables (in CGVTables?) and also emit
>> stores to vfptrs in class constructors (in CGF?). We should be able to
>> ask the VTableContext "hey, can you give me a list of virtual tables
>> I need to define; and what vfptr I should emit stores for".
>>
>> As you can see, the code for dealing with vtables in ABI-specific way
>> is currently split
>> over at least three places, thus making it much harder to add
>> ABI-specific functionality.
>> I've just looked at Reid's VBTables patch where he just wrote a
>> VBTableBuilder in the middle of CGVTables and it's so much simpler to
>> connect with CodeGen than what I'm doing in VTableBuilder.h for
>> vftables...
>>
>> I believe this should all be available through just one interface
>> (CGVTables?) which should have different implementations like
>> ItaniumABIVTables (with VTT) and MicrosoftABIVTables (with VBTables)
>> to be used from ItaniumCXXABI / MicrosoftCXXABI respectively.
>> This way, we'll consolidate the V{,F,B}Tables-related code from at
>> least three different places to just one.
>> This interface should also provide methods deal with virtual calls as
>> they slightly differ in these ABIs as well and tied to the vtables.
>> What do you think about this general direction?
>>
>> Would you mind if I move AST/VTableBuilder into CodeGen as the first step?
>>
>> --
>> Timur Iskhodzhanov,
>> Google Russia.
>