[LLVMdev] Proposal: extended MDString syntax

[Eric Christopher]

>
> Bin Zeng worked on a project as an intern last summer to serialize machine functions to yaml.  At the time, we were unable to commit it to trunk because we were waiting for Nick's yamlio work to get committed.  I've still got his patches and plan to commit them whenever I get a chance.  I was also considering having another intern pick up that project where it left off.
>
> The approach is perhaps similar to what Dan is proposing, just flipped around.  In one scheme, the top-level container is yaml and the IR is embedded within it along with the machine function stuff.  In the other, the IR is the top-level container and the machine functions are embedded as metadata.  I prefer the yaml approach.
>

Any reason? I remember the project, of course, but didn't really have
a good feel on any of the design decisions other than "hey, there's
this yaml thing". That said I don't believe I was in on the design
discussion in the first place.

> I'd be glad to reprioritize contributing the rest of Bin's patches to make those available sooner rather than later.  The more interesting part, with either scheme, is how to represent the machine functions.  We definitely want something that is readable but still easy to parse.

At least posting them with some description and a design for how it
works and the tradeoffs could be goodness. Then they'd be out there to
look at and discussed.

-eric