[PATCH] D115529: [flang][nfc] Clarify the frontend/backend distinction

[Pete Steinfeld via Phabricator via llvm-commits]

PeteSteinfeld added a comment.

In D115529#3186543 <https://reviews.llvm.org/D115529#3186543>, @schweitz wrote:

> I agree with the comment that calling MLIR and/or FIR a "front end" is arbitrary and, I suspect, mostly based on a directory structure.
>
> In the flang project/directory, there is a pretty clear and obvious distinction between the front end of parsing and semantics checking and the high-level semantic representation of FIR and optimizations. Indeed the distinction between these in the vernacular of the Flang project is "front end" vs. "lowering" or "optimizer". Flang has an Optimizer directory, mostly upstreamed, of its own, so the definitions given here seem confusing. In short, LLVM target independent optimizations won't be the only optimizations and do not define the entirety of "the optimizer" for Flang. (For completeness, the LLVM target independent optimizations and code generation parts are often referred to as "the backend" in Flang.)

Eric hints at the fact that it would be good for the high-level description of the compiler to mimic the structure of the code.


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