[LLVMdev] Whither exceptions

[Duncan Sands]

Hi Dale,

> Chris would like to turn on -enable-eh rather than -enable-correct-eh- 
> support in the llvm testsuite for those targets that support it.  The  
> following patch is intended to turn it on for x86 and ppc.  Anton,  
> Duncan, are you OK with this?

yes, though see below.

> Chris would also like to discuss renaming the EH command line  
> options, and I have to agree it's not obvious what they do.
> He had a couple of ideas:
> 
> > rename -enable-correct-eh-support to -enable-sjlj-exceptions or  
> > something
> 
> 
> > Maybe a better interface would be -eh-model={sjlj,dwarf,none} with  
> > none being the default?
> 
> If these were visible to end users I would not like exposing sjlj, an  
> implementation detail; however my understanding is that they aren't.   
> On the basis that they're intended for use by llvm geeks, I think  
> either of these is an improvement, except in the second case I think  
> the default should be target-dependent.  Comments?

How about having -enable-eh turn on dwarf eh on all targets (including
those that don't support it, in which case intrinsics get lowered to
nothing much IIRC), and also have it cause a LowerInvoke pass to be run
on targets that do not support dwarf eh.  Since LowerInvoke can result
in costly code, add a -disable-eh-emulation option (more or less
equivalent to the opposite of -enable-correct-eh-support) which causes
the LowerInvoke pass not to do anything (like !-enable-correct-eh-support
does).  This way, if you turn on -enable-eh then you get some kind of
eh support on all targets (emulated using sj/lj if the target does not
support dwarf eh).  The testsuite can thus just use -enable-eh.  If you
don't want eh at all then don't pass -enable-eh.  If you only want eh
on targets that support dwarf eh then you can pass -enable-eh -disable-eh-emulation.

Ciao,

Duncan.