About commit TILE-Gx backend to community repository and default disabled

[Tom Stellard]

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 05:38:28PM +0800, Jiong Wang wrote:
> Hi Chandler,
> 
> on 2013/3/15 17:15, Chandler Carruth wrote:
> >
> >On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 1:54 AM, Jiong Wang <jiwang at tilera.com
> ><mailto:jiwang at tilera.com>> wrote:
> >
> >    I agree that everyone should contribute to keep the community
> >    active and vigorious. But I think there are difference between
> >    contributors.
> >
> >       some are focused and with expertise on middle end, while others
> >    may on front or back end. so the normal way for a new contributor
> >    is, find a familiar point to start, then go deeper and wider and
> >    expand one's contribution during this process.
> >
> >       For Tilera corporation and me, we would like the keep tilegx
> >    backend actively maintained and improved, and wish it could be a
> >    good target to improve and test VLIW, many core features etc.
> >
> >
> >Inevitably, if you care about LLVM's support for your platform,
> >you will care about bugs and features in the target-independent
> >stack of LLVM's software (including the target independent parts
> >of Clang, etc). There will be bugs which are priorities only for
> >you and/or your users, features most pressing only for you or your
> >users, etc. As such, it seems likely that you will need at least a
> >basic working familiarity with the stack, and the ability to
> >improve it in at least basic ways. Simple things like finding and
> >fixing bugs in the target independent code generator, improving
> >DAG combine optimizations, or looking for compile time hotspots
> >are almost always approachable by nearly anyone on the project.
> 
>     I am not quite understand your points here, for a backend
> maintainer, of course, these things are daily work.
> 
> >
> >Essentially, you don't need to invent a new middle end
> >optimization, or improve the subtleties of our alias analysis.
> >Most of LLVM, and most of our bugs/missing features/areas for
> >improvement, involve straightforward C++ code and systems that
> >anyone who cares can go in, hack, and improve. That's what
> >occupies the majority of the maintenance work as it happens. There
> >is relatively little deeply detailed work requiring specialized
> >knowledge.
> 
>     Anyway, my question is "how could tilegx backend included in
> community repository?", I am here to seek answer for this. I
> searched mailinglist archive, and learned R600 and AArch64's request
> post, but find few things.
> 

Hi Jiong,

I am the maintainer of the R600 backend so I have some experience trying to
get a new backend included in the community repository.

My recommendation is to contact the project lead, Chris Lattner,
directly and point him to the reviews that have already been done and ask
him specifically what you need to do to get the backend approved.

There is no formal process in place for adding a new backend, and I
think if you keep posing your question to the list you will have trouble
getting a clear answer on what needs to be done

-Tom