Suggestion for api design about mir HOT 3 CLOSED

I am aware about hiding some internal details by API. But it is lesser concern for me right now.

Using a lot of pointers can slow down the code. We have this problem (pointer chasing) in GCC, where everything in RTL is lists (LLVM at least uses vectors in many parts of IR data) and pointers.

It also creates sharing problem. A few famous bugs in GCC were when people change value through pointers not realizing that the value is shared through another pointer. Therefore I specifically made op a structure for easy copying and no sharing although using pointers and sharing pointed data or/and more compact representation of some type operands would require less memory space.

In general, I am agree more work needed for API. Therefore I wrote it will change as MIR matures.

from mir.

LLVM's api seems to be type-safe despite using pointers. It has a nice hierarchy of types, and everything is a Value. But if you use the wrong type then LLVM will invoke abort at runtime - at least when assertions are enabled.

from mir.

I'll probably wait for the C to MIR translator as I can already generate C code from Ravi.

from mir.