GDC review process.

[Alex Rønne Petersen]

On 20-06-2012 03:01, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 6/19/2012 3:47 PM, Alex Rønne Petersen wrote:
>> On 19-06-2012 23:52, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> GDC can certainly define its D calling convention to match GCC's. It's
>>> an "implementation defined" thing, not a language defined one.
>> Then let's please rename it to the DMD ABI instead of calling it the D
>> ABI
>> and
>> making it look like it's part of the language on the website.
>
> The ABI is not part of the language. For example, the C Standard says
> nothing whatsoever about the C ABI.

Then it's very misleading that it's under the language reference area of 
the website and calls it the "D ABI" and not the "DMD ABI". This might 
have been fine back when there was only DMD, but it really needs to be 
made clear that this is not an ABI that compilers are required to follow.

>
>> Further, D mangling rules should be separate from calling convention.
>
> I disagree. The mangling rules are not part of the language
> specification, either. But they are necessary so that a function with
> one convention won't be connected to one with another.
>

If compilers employed their own mangling schemes, debuggers and other 
tools would never be able to properly demangle names. I think it is 
important that the mangling is at least emphasized as a highly 
recommended (but not required) part of the language to implementors.

-- 
Alex Rønne Petersen
alex at lycus.org
http://lycus.org