Basile STARYNKEVITCH wrote: > I'm trying to understand how other "plugin" related effort deals with > this.
In an ideal world, you create a plugin API/ABI that is decoupled from any of the internals of the main program and which has its own headers and interface. Plugin authors simply code to that API without involving any gcc headers. As a plugin author, this is ideal as you simply grab this SDK and code your plugin without having to ever touch gcc sources, and your plugin "just works" with any gcc. This of course requires a ton more work to create and maintain, since you have to a) invent a new API that is flexible enough to do everything that a plugin ever might want to do, and in a way that does not introduce too many target- or architecture-specific details; b) code wrappers in gcc that translate the plugin API into the internal representation; c) maintain those wrappers in the face of changing gcc internals. It's been my observation that whenever plugins are discussed, the majority of gcc maintainers do not want to bear the maintenance and support burden of this level of decoupling, so it's kind of a pie in the sky position I think. Brian
