On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Bernd Schmidt <ber...@codesourcery.com> wrote: > On 04/04/2012 11:06 AM, Richard Guenther wrote: >> So - I'll veto the switch unless I see 1) and 2). 1) and 2) can be combined >> by transitioning vec.h to a C++ template class, with proper GC support. >> (not sure that I can veto anything - heh) > > I don't think I can veto anything, but I'll go on the record again > saying that I don't think this entire plan is a good idea. Write a new > project in C++? Absolutely. Convert a large existing one to a different > language? A huge waste of time that will distract us for years from > actual user-visible changes.
I agree for the idea of converting all of GCC to C++ (whatever that means). I disagree for the part making the internal infrastructure easier to use, understand and maintain. Which means targeting mostly isolated sub-systems, like vec.h (and other various containers), double-int.[ch] (and other various way of representing and working with constants). Making tree or gimple a C++ class with inheritance and whatever is indeed a huge waste of time and existing developer ressources (that, if only because they have to adapt and maintain two completely different code-bases over some time). I expect the GCC core to maintain written in C, compiled by C++. > I also find debugging C++ in gdb somewhat more annoying than debugging > plain C, and at the moment I always go back to a stage1 compiler. Indeed - I'd be worried if my debugging efficiency decreases by more than 5%. Richard.