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Why is this beneficial? It means you need to change several repositories to add one target triple. This may be a win in terms of in-tree stability, but it reduc
by duaneb 11y ago
Why is this beneficial? It means you need to change several repositories to add one target triple. This may be a win in terms of in-tree stability, but it reduces accessibility to everyone else.
- sanxiyn 11y agoIt is beneficial in that it discourages proprietary backends to LLVM which are not contributed back to LLVM. It is the same benefit GCC enjoys by using GPL.
- crazysim 11y agoDoes Apple have some proprietary backends? I guess they have the resources to maintain such.
- duaneb 11y agoYes, they definitely do.
- gsnedders 11y agoLike what, nowadays? I know their ARM64 backend was, but what is now? Do they still maintain forks of them? (With more target data for their SoCs?)
- jevinskie 11y agoGPUs.
- willvarfar 11y agoSwift is still out-of-tree.
- ashitlerferad 11y agoSounds like the LLVM project should be using the GPL. This constant churn kind of turns the MIT license into the GPL but only for small companies and individuals who can't keep up with the churn. I guess that is why Apple likes LLVM.
- sklogic 11y agoThere is a reason proprietary backends would always be necessary. Hardware companies are very touchy about the patents, and not publishing an ISA-related work may often be the only way to protect from the trolls. Such companies would often encourage (privately or publicly) clean room 3rd party backends, and I'm pretty sure that the one we're discussing here is exactly of this kind. But they would be scared to death to allow any of their employees to even send a tiny patch to a compiler backend, if it could expose some microarchitecture knowledge that was not published.