carbon-lang
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Published
20 hours ago •
carbon-language
carbon-language
SemIR fidelity when representing rewrite semantics
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The toolchain's Semantic IR should start off modeling the full, complex, and rich library-based and generic extension point semantics of Carbon without eliding any layers or rewrites for compile time efficiency. We shouldn't front-load elision or optimization when implementing the designs.
Once we have a full-fidelity implementation, we should work to build an efficient elision, short-circuit, or common case simplification into the design itself sufficient to make the SemIR model efficient. Only if we cannot find a reasonable approach for that should we diverge the SemIR model to optimize its efficiency, and we should preserve full fidelity in an optional mode.
