Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft [LWN.net]

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 29, 2014 21:20 UTC (Wed) by Del- (guest, #72641)
In reply to: Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft by PaXTeam
Parent article: Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

> wrong. the kernel's API has nothing to do with the syscall interface it provides to userland. the former is for kernel code, modules included, not userland and is intentionally not stable.

"The kernel user-space API is the API that allows programs in user space to access system resources and services of the Linux kernel. This API, by choice, never breaks."
ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_API#Kernel_user...

> wrong, the gcc API that nix talked about has nothing to do with any C++ or other ABI.

For GCC the APIs most people are interested in are in the libs. I showed the ABI part, but there is also an API for C++ too of course, here you are: http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/api.html
I find the ABI story of C++ in GCC more fascinating, that's all.
A part from that I can only think of the plugin API I already gave you. Does even GCC define an internal API? AFAIK, internal APIs are typically not stable, so not sure how relevant they are for this discussion at all. The starting point for this discussion was usage of LLVM by external projects. So no, I have no clue as to what GCC API you go on about.

You'd better run along and edit wikipedia though, my patience with you is up.

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Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 29, 2014 22:36 UTC (Wed) by PaXTeam (guest, #24616) [Link]

> The kernel user-space API

that's the *userland* API (syscalls), and not the kernel's API (which is used by kernel code, including modules, both in-tree or out-of-tree). which part of it is not clear to you? ;)

> For GCC the APIs most people are interested in are in the libs.

irrelevant, you were not biching about this kind of API regarding LLVM either, so don't try to change the subject. and the C++ ABI (i bet you don't know what that is either) was irrelevant here as well, noone was discussing it.

> Does even GCC define an internal API?

what is an 'internal API'? what makes it 'internal'?

> AFAIK, internal APIs are typically not stable, so not sure how relevant they are for this discussion at all.

because you were bitching about the unstable nature of the same kind of 'internal API' of LLVM as something bad. you can't have it both ways, that's what everyone's been trying to explain to you.

> The starting point for this discussion was usage of LLVM by external projects.

no it wasn't. rather it started with you making this claim:

> This sounds incredibly stupid. Stable API's is the back-bone of any successful open project.

and you were shown counter-examples (all GPL projects btw) and you still didn't recognize how idiotic your claim is. in other words, you were trolling and i'm having great fun at exposing it ;).

> So no, I have no clue as to what GCC API you go on about.

that's because you don't know what an API is. go educate yourself, it'd be a much better use of your time than trolling.