[cfe-dev] [LLVMdev] RFC: A proposal to move toward using C++11 features in LLVM & Clang / bounding support for old host compilers

[Sean Silva]

On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 4:10 AM, David Chisnall
<David.Chisnall at cl.cam.ac.uk>wrote:

>
>
> I don't think GCC is the right comparison, because GCC is a compiler.
>  LLVM is (intended to be) a set of reusable libraries for building
> compilers.
>
> Maintaining approximately stable APIs and providing a deprecation strategy
> and well-documented upgrade mechanisms (i.e. If you are using this API, you
> need to stop and start using this one.  Here is where the new one is
> documented, and here are some examples of how it's used.) is the difference
> between LLVM being a set of reusable libraries and LLVM being a bunch of
> common code that's been factored out of a few programs.
>

Or even worse, just keeping the headers for each subcomponent of the
program (not even "a few programs") in a top-level `include/` directory and
just saying "we decree that everything in include/ is our public API;
therefore we are library based". Having the software split into modular
components is a necessary---but not even close to sufficient---condition
for providing a useful, reusable API (still need to look at use cases,
docs, stability promises, ...). Especially lld suffers from this.

-- Sean Silva


>
> David
>
>
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