On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 10:20 PM, Basile Starynkevitch <bas...@starynkevitch.net> wrote: > On Thu, 2010-05-20 at 21:02 +0200, Steven Bosscher wrote: >> Hello, >> >> The Obj-C++ front end is effectively unmaintained, and has virtually >> no serious users. I propose to remove it from GCC. > > Maybe we could consider, for the putative people wanting to maintain > that frontend, to make it a plugin (or perhaps an external program > producing Gimple-syntax).
I think this is an interesting idea in principle. But IMHO removing ObjC++ is perpendicular to fe-as-plugins. FWIW the infrastructure for front ends as plugins is not ready and probably will not be ready for some time to come (got time? :-). We will first need to separate the front ends better from the rest of the compiler. For example, front ends should not have to call cgraph_finalize_compilation_unit. It should be the middle-end calling the front end to just produce GIMPLE and a cgraph, and then return to let the middle-end finish the translation units. I'm using this as an example because one of the big blockers for this change are (yes, you've guessed it!) the ObjC/ObjC++ front ends. :-) Ciao! Steven
