GCCJIT dynamic down casting (GCC16 or future GCC17)

Project / Subsystem

gcc / gcc

Date

2026-05-07

Proposer

Basile STARYNKEVITCH <basile@starynkevitch.net>

Source type

public_inbox

Consensus

Proposed

Sentiment

/10

Technical tradeoffs

  • Implementing dynamic downcasting may introduce runtime overhead.
  • Adding type information to `gcc_jit_object` may increase memory usage.
  • The design needs to consider the potential impact on performance and ABI stability.
  • Alternative solutions might involve a different approach to serialization.

All attributes

project
gcc
subsystem
gcc
patch_id
discussion_id
5815119ebbc2fac15cdc17976856aaa4d28add15.camel@starynkevitch.net
source_type
public_inbox
title
GCCJIT dynamic down casting (GCC16 or future GCC17)
headline
Gccjit dynamic down casting (GCC16 or future GCC17)
tldr
Basile Starynkevitch asks about dynamic downcasting capabilities in GCCJIT to determine the type of a `gcc_jit_object` pointer.
proposer
Basile STARYNKEVITCH <basile@starynkevitch.net>
consensus
Proposed
outcome
proposed
sentiment_score
technical_tradeoffs
  • Implementing dynamic downcasting may introduce runtime overhead.
  • Adding type information to `gcc_jit_object` may increase memory usage.
  • The design needs to consider the potential impact on performance and ABI stability.
  • Alternative solutions might involve a different approach to serialization.
series_id
series_role
standalone
series_parts
[]
tags
  • GCCJIT
  • JIT
  • downcasting
  • dynamic typing
  • serialization
bugzilla_url
date
2026-05-07T00:00:00.000Z

GCCJIT dynamic down casting (GCC16 or future GCC17)

Basile Starynkevitch asks about dynamic downcasting capabilities in GCCJIT. Specifically, he wants to determine the underlying type of a gcc_jit_object pointer (e.g., struct, lvalue, field, etc.) at runtime. He needs this functionality for serializing GCCJIT representations to JSON in his RefPerSys software.