[LLVMdev] [cfe-dev] thoughts about n-bit bytes for clang/llvm

[Mike Stump]

On Sep 23, 2009, at 4:15 PM, Ray Fix wrote:
> I am trying to gauge how much interest there is in supporting non-8- 
> bit byte targets.

Not much would be my guess.  I'd recommend incrementally just sending  
in the patches.  Start simple (fix a few places) and then work up to  
larger and larger patches.

For example:

   unsigned getCharWidth() const { return 8; } // FIXME

is a great place to start for clang.

> It would be fairly easy to go through the LLVM/Clang code and change
> 8s to 16s, fork it, and be done with it.

Ah, but it hopefully isn't too much more work to change it to  
Target.getCharWidth() instead...

> Assuming all of this gets done, there is the important question about
> how it gets tested.

I wouldn't worry about testing.  In the end, you'll have your target  
and you'll test it.  For others, just don't change 8 to 16 and expect  
people not to pitch fork you.  :-)