WG14 adopted the _ExtInt feature from Clang for C23, but renamed the
type to be _BitInt. This patch does the vast majority of the work to
rename _ExtInt to _BitInt, which accounts for most of its size. The new
type is exposed in older C modes and all C++ modes as a conforming
extension. However, there are functional changes worth calling out:
* Deprecates _ExtInt with a fix-it to help users migrate to _BitInt.
* Updates the mangling for the type.
* Updates the documentation and adds a release note to warn users what
is going on.
* Adds new diagnostics for use of _BitInt to call out when it's used as
a Clang extension or as a pre-C23 compatibility concern.
* Adds new tests for the new diagnostic behaviors.
I want to call out the ABI break specifically. We do not believe that
this break will cause a significant imposition for early adopters of
the feature, and so this is being done as a full break. If it turns out
there are critical uses where recompilation is not an option for some
reason, we can consider using ABI tags to ease the transition.
This reverts commit 61ba1481e2.
I'm reverting this because it breaks the lldb build with
incomplete switch coverage warnings. I would fix it forward,
but am not familiar enough with lldb to determine the correct
fix.
lldb/source/Plugins/TypeSystem/Clang/TypeSystemClang.cpp:3958:11: error: enumeration values 'DependentExtInt' and 'ExtInt' not handled in switch [-Werror,-Wswitch]
switch (qual_type->getTypeClass()) {
^
lldb/source/Plugins/TypeSystem/Clang/TypeSystemClang.cpp:4633:11: error: enumeration values 'DependentExtInt' and 'ExtInt' not handled in switch [-Werror,-Wswitch]
switch (qual_type->getTypeClass()) {
^
lldb/source/Plugins/TypeSystem/Clang/TypeSystemClang.cpp:4889:11: error: enumeration values 'DependentExtInt' and 'ExtInt' not handled in switch [-Werror,-Wswitch]
switch (qual_type->getTypeClass()) {
Introduction/Motivation:
LLVM-IR supports integers of non-power-of-2 bitwidth, in the iN syntax.
Integers of non-power-of-two aren't particularly interesting or useful
on most hardware, so much so that no language in Clang has been
motivated to expose it before.
However, in the case of FPGA hardware normal integer types where the
full bitwidth isn't used, is extremely wasteful and has severe
performance/space concerns. Because of this, Intel has introduced this
functionality in the High Level Synthesis compiler[0]
under the name "Arbitrary Precision Integer" (ap_int for short). This
has been extremely useful and effective for our users, permitting them
to optimize their storage and operation space on an architecture where
both can be extremely expensive.
We are proposing upstreaming a more palatable version of this to the
community, in the form of this proposal and accompanying patch. We are
proposing the syntax _ExtInt(N). We intend to propose this to the WG14
committee[1], and the underscore-capital seems like the active direction
for a WG14 paper's acceptance. An alternative that Richard Smith
suggested on the initial review was __int(N), however we believe that
is much less acceptable by WG14. We considered _Int, however _Int is
used as an identifier in libstdc++ and there is no good way to fall
back to an identifier (since _Int(5) is indistinguishable from an
unnamed initializer of a template type named _Int).
[0]https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/software/programmable/quartus-prime/hls-compiler.html)
[1]http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n2472.pdf
Differential Revision: https://reviews.llvm.org/D73967
Aaron Ballman