Re:Making the Clang AST Leaner and Faster
by o11c on Wednesday November 12, 2025 @07:59PM
(#45909121)
The C++ implementation, sure. But there is plenty of other implementation space without giving up like Java.
With a trait-first implementation that mostly defers monomorphization and prefers "static if" over C++-style specialized implementations, the only hard choice is whether to optimize codegen for size or speed.
Trying to retrofit this onto standard C++ is ... not actually as difficult as you might think. The real problem is the implementation of builtins that rely heavily on "this really must be a constant during X phase of compilation".
With a trait-first implementation that mostly defers monomorphization and prefers "static if" over C++-style specialized implementations, the only hard choice is whether to optimize codegen for size or speed.
Trying to retrofit this onto standard C++ is ... not actually as difficult as you might think. The real problem is the implementation of builtins that rely heavily on "this really must be a constant during X phase of compilation".