[LLVMdev] Calling-convention lowering proposal

[Andrew Haley]

Chris Lattner wrote:
> On Apr 30, 2009, at 9:38 AM, David Greene wrote:
>> On Wednesday 29 April 2009 19:22, Chris Lattner wrote:
>>> On Apr 29, 2009, at 8:39 AM, David Greene wrote:
>>>> This patch changes the LLVM API.  We should have a process for
>>>> deprecating
>>>> obsolete interfaces before removing them entirely.  It's a  
>>>> significant
>>>> maintenance headache to pull down a new release and fix all of the  
>>>> API
>>>> issues along with tracking down new bugs introduced.
>>> No, we make no attempt at being API compatible across revs of LLVM.
>> That's a huge mistake going forward if we want to grow the community.
> 
> Perhaps.  However, I greatly prefer to make life easier for people who  
> contribute code (by preventing them from having to worry about  
> deprecation etc) than for those who don't.  Reducing the barrier to  
> contributing code is a good way (IMO) to encourage contributions and  
> new developers.

Perhaps, but it's a barrier for those who actually want to use LLVM's JIT.
We'd love to keep up with the latest versions of LLVM, but stuff just keeps
breaking and sometimes features are just deleted.  For example, it used
to be possible easily to turn on and off asm dumping, but it isn't any more.

Andrew.