[cfe-dev] [PATCH] New syntax and functionality for __has_attribute

[Aaron Ballman]

> That's good news -- thanks for confirming.
>
> The feature detection macro itself will still need to have a different name
> (or some other mechanism) so it can be used compatibly with existing clang
> deployments, because _has_attribute() currently emits a parse error instead
> of gracefully returning 0 when passed the new argument syntax:
>
> tmp/attr2.cpp:1:5: error: builtin feature check macro requires a
> parenthesized identifier
> #if __has_attribute(__attribute__((weakref)))
>     ^

Good catch. Unfortunately, __has_attribute is really the best
identifier for the macro, so I am loathe to let it go.

Due to the current design of __has_attribute, we can't get away with "
magic" by expanding the non-function-like form into a value that could
be tested. So we would really have to pick a new name if we are
worried about this.

Suggestions on the name are welcome. Regardless of the name picked, if
it's different from __has_attribute, we should deprecate the existing
usage since the proposed implementation is backwards compatible and
the existing __has_attribute is not forwards-compatible.

> For forward compatibility your new version should warn, rather than emitting
> an error, upon encountering invalid attribute syntaxes that may be valid in
> future standards or other language dialects (e.g. single-braced C++/CLI []
> attributes should return 0, indicating "unsupported" rather than triggering
> a parse error).

I agree, and will implement for the next round.

~Aaron