Feature #2248
Label all SIMD functions as pure/nodiscard
Description
#2247 would have triggered a compiler warning in Clang if the SIMD function were labeled as
[[nodiscard]](since clang 4) or
__attribute__ ((pure))(since at least 3.4).
Questions:
1) Is it worth labeling all SIMD functions/operators to avoid bugs like this in the future?
2) Is it better to label them as pure or nodiscard? Pro pure: could inform the compiler about more than the return value (Does that enable any new optimizations?). Pro nodiscard: non-gcc extension and could be used also for non-pure
3) Should we introduce a gmx_nodiscard/pure? Alternative is to directly use the nodiscard attribute but then we need to "-Wno-attributes" for older compilers which don't have that attribute yet
4) Should the attribute be added to all implementations? Alternative would be to have a separate declaration for all function (which also would contain the doxygen) which has the attribute and have the implementations only have the definition.
Related issues
History
#1 Updated by Roland Schulz over 3 years ago
- Description updated (diff)
#2 Updated by Szilárd Páll about 3 years ago
- Category set to mdrun
I am pro using attributes and I have heard __attribute__ ((pure)) and __attribute__ ((const)) being recommended as the compiler can do more aggressive optimization. Are there no equivalents in clang?
[[nodiscard]] is C++17, though, isn't it?
#3 Updated by Roland Schulz almost 2 years ago
- Related to Task #2857: Clarify recommended function specifies (constexpr, noexcept, pure) added
#4 Updated by Roland Schulz almost 2 years ago
clang does support the same attributes.
nodiscard is indeed only C++17 but it would be trivial to define gmx_nodicard which evaluates to nothing for compiler which don't support it. Most our compilers already support it in C++14. Meaning we would get the benefit because Jenkins would be guaranteed to warn.