Re: binutils development (was Re: Problems building binutils-000220 snapshot)

["H . J . Lu" <hjl at lucon dot org>]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2000 at 12:47:54PM -0500, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
>    Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 09:28:56 -0800
>    From: "H . J . Lu" <hjl@lucon.org>
> 
>    > You know as well as I do how to get a patch into gcc.  When I look at
>    > the message you cite above, I see you mixing completely unrelated
>    > stuff like some sort of dlopen support with adding GNAT support.
>    > That's a bad start.  I even see support for Compaq demangling,
>    > whatever that is, which only works if the user has some sort of .so
>    > file.  Do you think that is appropriate for GNU code?
> 
>    Compaq wants to make their C++ compiler available for Linux/alpha. It
>    needs that feature in ld. I believe it is appropriate for Linux to
>    support it.
> 
> I'm not a gcc maintainer, so it's not my call.  But surely Compaq does
> not consider their C++ mangling scheme to be a secret.  You can't even
> keep such a thing a secret.  Why don't they just provide the source
> for their demangler, so that it can be incorporated into cplus-dem.c?

I think I have answered it in my own followup. Basically, it doesn't
make much senses to put the demangler in binutils if it will change
in compiler and compiler needs the correct output. Do you expect
a new binutils release just because an XYZ compiler makes a small
change in its mangling scheme to add a new feature or fix a bug?
It is also possible that the same mangled name may mean different
things for different versions of the same compiler.

> 
> Sure, but those options are just as useful to select, say, Java
> demangling, and the Java code is already in cplus-dem.c.  Get the
> simple stuff in first, and then fight about the complicated stuff.
> --demangler is simple.  dlopen is complicated.  This is basic patch
> strategy--you've known it for years.
> 

Not many people showed any interests in my change. I am willing to
work with anyone who are interested to get it right and get it in.
I need someone to cleanup my patch and break it into smaller pieces
since I don't have the time to get my patches into gcc.



H.J.