Re: Announcement: GNAT ported to LLVM

[baldrick <baldrick@free.fr>]

Hi Gene,

> I assume that due to the link-time optimization capability that
> inlining among packages will be handled naturally.

that's correct: you can compile each package to bitcode, then at
link-time they will all be mutually optimized, including inlining
into each other.  You can also compile the entire runtime to bitcode
and have that be mutually optimized with your code too.  I didn't
turn this on by default because currently link-time-optimization is
not transparent: you have to explicitly call some LLVM tools at link
time.  There's a plan to teach llvm-gcc to do this automagically when
you use it to do linking.

> GNAT-gcc can't do that, right?

It can to some extent: if you use -O2 -gnatn then it will peek inside
the bodies of packages you are using to try to inline functions.  That
functionality becomes a lot less useful now though.

> This alone ought to be a big deal as accessor/setter
> conventions are leading to programs filled with tiny procedures and
> functions.

Very true, and I guess that's why ACT implemented -gnatn.