[llvm-dev] Question about __NSConstantString and __NSConstantString_tag

[Michka Popoff via llvm-dev]

Hi

I am the maintainer of pygccxml, which uses clang/llvm and CastXML to parse c++ code.
A user reported a problem with the current llvm 3.9 trunk version (I tested with r261262).

Our problem is that the AST contains some declarations which were not there before.

Using "clang -Xclang -ast-dump” on a c++ file, I get the following result:

TranslationUnitDecl 0x8e41ab0 <<invalid sloc>> <invalid sloc>
|-TypedefDecl 0x8e41fe8 <<invalid sloc>> <invalid sloc> implicit __int128_t '__int128'
| `-BuiltinType 0x8e41d00 '__int128'
|-TypedefDecl 0x8e42048 <<invalid sloc>> <invalid sloc> implicit __uint128_t 'unsigned __int128'
| `-BuiltinType 0x8e41d20 'unsigned __int128'
|-TypedefDecl 0x8e42378 <<invalid sloc>> <invalid sloc> implicit __NSConstantString 'struct __NSConstantString_tag'
| `-RecordType 0x8e42130 'struct __NSConstantString_tag'
|   `-CXXRecord 0x8e42098 '__NSConstantString_tag'
|-TypedefDecl 0x8e42408 <<invalid sloc>> <invalid sloc> implicit __builtin_ms_va_list 'char *'
| `-PointerType 0x8e423d0 'char *'
|   `-BuiltinType 0x8e41b40 'char'
|-TypedefDecl 0x8e42728 <<invalid sloc>> <invalid sloc> implicit __builtin_va_list 'struct __va_list_tag [1]'
| `-ConstantArrayType 0x8e426d0 'struct __va_list_tag [1]' 1 
|   `-RecordType 0x8e424f0 'struct __va_list_tag'
|     `-CXXRecord 0x8e42458 '__va_list_tag'
`-NamespaceDecl 0x8e42778 <example.hpp:5:1, line:7:1> line:5:11 ns
  `-VarDecl 0x8e8f970 <line:6:5, col:13> col:9 a 'int' cinit
    `-IntegerLiteral 0x8e8f9d0 <col:13> 'int' 1

My file was just containing a namespace (called ns), and an int declaration (int a = 1).

__NSConstantString and __NSConstantString_tag are now exposed.

I am not sure if this is the wanted behaviour ? We found out that there seem to have been some back and forth
in the code modifying these structures: r259624, r259715, r259721, r25973.

Maybe someone could enlighten us about this change.
If it’s not a bug, we would like to know more about these structures.

Thanks

Michka