[LLVMdev] JVM Backend

[Renato Golin]

2009/11/30 David Roberts <d at vidr.cc>:
>> Nobody is asking for perfection, just completeness.
> I'd just like to point out that I don't have a great deal of
> experience in compiler development - I just thought that this would be
> an interesting project to try. I realise that it isn't complete in
> it's current state.

Hi David and Jon,

After reading this thread, I think there has been a slight misunderstanding.

I agree with Jon that there are some crucial problems with your patch
re odd size variables and tail calls (possibly many other issues that
were overlooked), but I also agree with David that, as this is an
experiment, it's not perfect, nor complete.

If you apply that as a patch now, everyone else will have to maintain
it when they do their unrelated changes, increasing the cost of the
project's maintenance. I welcome your code (have been wondering about
it recently too), but I think that you should keep it as a separate
project for now. Once it's at least complete, I'm sure people will be
happy to apply as a patch, but for now it'll be more nuisance than
help.

Just to give you some figures, I've written a very simple compiler
using LLVM with less than 10 classes using mostly the IR codegen, some
function passes and the JIT. It was common for me to have to update my
own code twice in the same day for changes in the internal libraries.
I was happy to do so, but I believe that if I ever merged my code to
mainstream, every single one of them would have to change my code as
well before committing.

Once it's complete, check in. Once it's perfect, get a Nobel prize. ;)

My tuppence...

cheers,
--renato

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