On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 8:26 AM, Mark Mitchell <m...@codesourcery.com> wrote: > I am pleased to report that the GCC Steering Committee and the FSF have > approved the use of C++ in GCC itself. Of course, there's no reason for > us to use C++ features just because we can. The goal is a better > compiler for users, not a C++ code base for its own sake. >
Outstanding decision! C++ is an amazing language. C++'s three main features(encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism) can greatly improve the GCC's code base, render it more modular and readable and let GCC developer to think at a more abstract layer. In GCC, there are too many data structures that can be encapsulated as ADT(Abstract Data Type), like sbitmap, bitmap, struct real_value, struct sreal, double_int, HWI, etc. I will glad to see these data structures can be used as conveniently as string in C++. The complexity and irregularity of TREE and RTL IRs may be the biggest hurdle to use inheritance and polymorphism on them. Language hooks and target hooks can be easily replaced by virtual methods. I have FUD on the use of "advanced" C++ features like template(even standard template), namespace, exceptions. This is partly because my favorite source code analyzer can not handle them properly. I have tried to use my favorite source code analyzer to analyze LLVM source code, which use C++ standard template aggressively, the result is not ideal . I also have tried to use it to analyze Open64 source code, which does not use template, the result is much better .It would be nice if there are another template-free encapsulation over standard template. For example, an template-free container encapsulating standard container template. -- 徐持恒(Chiheng Xu) Wuhan,China
