2008/8/20 Nils Pipenbrinck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Let's get to the point: The documentation sucks. If you want to learn how > things work the wiki and the documentation is of little help. You have to > read other code, step through other optimizations and do a lot of > reverse-engineering and code-reading to understand how all the different > things fit and relate to each other. >
We know and we agree and we would like this to improve. Believe me, it was worse just 2 years ago. It is slowly improving but we need more help. > I think a well commented pseudo-pass (well document as: talk to someone who > know C but has no idea about the GCC magic..) that does something stupid but > valid like re-inventing the neg-operator by using not and subtraction could > act as be a very nice boilerplate code for people like me. Or even your own pass could be the pseudo-pass. This is a good place to start improving documentation: http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/WritingANewPass You do not need any approval to modify all this and you can always ask in this list for some reviewers afterwards. > For someone who is into the SSA structures and the gcc internals should be > able to write up something within a day or an half. Yes, but hired developers are not paid to do this and volunteers are typically interested on investing their limited free time in other things. This is catch22 that you are already experiencing: If you are a total newbie, you do not feel confident to write any documentation. If you are experienced, you want to implement things rather than write documentation that you do not need anymore. > Just an idea.. And just to let you know how hard it can be: Finding out what > GTY means *can* take half a day... http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GTY http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Memory_management?highlight=%28gty%29 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GCC_glossary?highlight=%28gty%29 We actually have lots of documentation but it is not very inter-connected, complete or condensed. We appreciate any help on this. We would accept patches that just improve the comments in the source-code (as long as they are correct and submitted properly). Cheers, Manuel.
