Re: pre-summit introspection status

["Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro" <gjc inescporto pt>]

On Fri, 2008-10-10 at 17:19 -0400, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> Colin Walters wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 9:34 PM, Behdad Esfahbod <behdad behdad org> wrote:
> >> But most recently I was reading the static analysis literature and came across
> >> the idea of using gcc user-attributes for source code annotation.  Take the
> >> above example, then one can define:
> >>
> >> #define G_IR_ARRAY __attribute__((user(g_ir_array)))
> >>
> >> On the face, it's not much different from what I proposed earlier.  However,
> >> it has an immense power: you can use gcc or gcc-compatible frontends.
> > 
> > Well, using gcc as a parser is problematic
> > (http://lwn.net/Articles/301135/).
> 
> Can't read that right now.  Will try again when it's free.  But Tom Tromey
> told me that the gcc plugin patch will land soonish.

Apparently there are also fundamental problems with the way GCC parses
types, see http://www.gccxml.org/Bug/view.php?id=7572

This kind of problem can cause serious portability issues, for instance.
Having used GCC-XML extensively in recent months, I am now very wary
about the possibility of using it in GNOME if the alternative gtk-doc
parser works.

> 
> > Right now we have a custom parser
> > that generally works.  Not that it doesn't have its limitations but
> it
> > would be a lot of work to replace.
> > 
> >> Moreover, you can write static analyzers that check, for example,
> that the
> >> array is not shorter than its claimed length.  The possibilities
> are uncountable.
> > 
> > Well, one could also modify the static analyzer to understand the
> > gtk-doc annotations.
> 
> Right... Writing yet another frontend with it's own bugs and
> limitations...
> Between gcc and llvm there's room to accommodate everyone...

gcc has its own bugs and limitations as well.

> 
> > I'm not sure - I don't have a strong opinion on
> > this.  The plan is to make a decision on at the summit, we'll
> discuss
> > this proposal there.
> 
> 
> Cool.
> 
> behdad
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-- 
Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro
<gjc inescporto pt> <gustavo users sourceforge net>
"The universe is always one step beyond logic" -- Frank Herbert