On 11/18/05, Laurent GUERBY <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, 2005-11-18 at 11:40 +0000, Andrew Haley wrote: > > A nightmare scenario is debugging the compiler when its behaviour > > changes due to using "-S". Assembly source is something that we > > maintainers use more than anyone else. > > If we go the direct generation route, I think it would be more > efficient (if possible) to add whatever extra information is needed in > the object file (like the asm template string, compiler comments, ...) > so that object code dumper will get it back to you on request. So skip > the -S altogether, always use the object dumper to "look at assembly".
The point Andrew's raising here is that you are replacing an intermediate form that is very useful for isolating problems --- the assembly language file --- with an in-core form that is much more difficult to inspect. And there are various side consequences: for example, you know the compiler isn't going to go and tweak the assembly-language file you're looking at, because it's exited. But with an in-core representation (and a non-type-safe language like C), compiler bugs can still be mangling the assembly code "after" it's been generated. For a 2% speedup? That hasn't been carefully measured?
