[llvm-dev] [RFC] AAP Backend

[Mehdi Amini via llvm-dev]

> On Aug 26, 2016, at 9:09 AM, Renato Golin <renato.golin at linaro.org> wrote:
> 
> On 26 August 2016 at 16:58, Mehdi Amini <mehdi.amini at apple.com> wrote:
>> This was addressed in Alex’s email: " In the past, the only exception I can think of is the Lanai backend, but in that case we have a strong commitment of multiple employees at a major corporation committed to that target's maintenance.”.
> 
> So, are we picking features based on company size, now? That doesn't
> make much sense in an open source project…

“Major corporation” does not mean size to me, I read it as “having a major involvement in the project”.


> 
> The current policy states:
> 
> "There must be an active community behind the target. This community
> will help maintain the target by providing buildbots, fixing bugs,
> answering the LLVM community’s questions and making sure the new
> target doesn’t break any of the other targets, or generic code. This
> behavior is expected to continue throughout the lifetime of the
> target’s code."
> 
> No mention about the size or the amount of money their companies have,
> nor demands it to be a company at all.


Note that the text mentions "active community”, which is what I’m asking about:

“the question is about who will use/develop/maintain this backend upstream in LLVM?"
"is there already an open-source community around this backend somewhere?"


— 
Mehdi

> 
> 
>> I don’t think the 3 months cool down period replaces in any way this pre-evaluation.
>> If a single developer / single user of a virtual architecture is active enough for 3 months that nothing really breaks, it does not make it an “active community”.
> 
> Er... This is what the current policy states:
> 
> "The target must have addressed every other minimum requirement and
> have been stable in tree for at least 3 months. This cool down period
> is to make sure that the back-end and the target community can endure
> continuous upstream development for the foreseeable future."
> 
> If everyone else's code don't break their stuff, or if every breakage
> is met with prompt fix and improvement on the test suite, it doesn't
> matter how many people, who or how many they are.
> 
> If nothing really breaks after 3 months it means that their back-end
> is really pretty well isolated and hardened to cope with most
> front-end and middle end changes that will be thrown at them at
> considerable volumes. That sounds pretty good to me.
> 
> cheers,
> --renato