[cfe-dev] [RFC] builtin for structure pretty printing

[Paul Semel via cfe-dev]

Hi devs,


I have recently posted a patch here : https://reviews.llvm.org/D44093 and I 
would like to have your advices on how this feature might be useful in a 
production build. (reviews are also appreciated 🙂)

This idea is to basically provide a builtin that permits to dump the content of 
a structure at runtime.

Here is how I am currently using it :

struct test {
     char *a;
     int b;
};

int main(void)
{
     struct test t = {
         .a = "TEST",
         .b = 1234
     };
     __builtin_dump_struct(&t, &printf);
}

And here is the output I am basically getting :

$ ./main
struct test {
char * a : TEST
int b : 1234
}

I started developing this feature while doing some kernel development. Indeed, 
it can sometimes be really hard to get a debugger working and thus do this job 
for us, and I am often in the need to write my own pretty printing functions for 
each of my structures. I know this is also the case for other people doing 
kernel development, that's why I started developing this.

Please feel free to give your feedback on this one, any help is appreciated ! 🙂

Thanks,


-- 
Paul Semel