Conversion to the LLVM dialect is being refactored to be more progressive and
is now performed as a series of independent passes converting different
dialects. These passes may produce unrealized_conversion_cast operations that
represent pending conversions between built-in and LLVM dialect types.
Historically, a more monolithic Standard-to-LLVM conversion pass did not need
these casts as all operations were converted in one shot. Previous refactorings
have led to the requirement of running the Standard-to-LLVM conversion pass to
clean up unrealized_conversion_casts even though the IR had no standard
operations in it. The pass must have been also run the last among all to-LLVM
passes, in contradiction with the partial conversion logic. Additionally, the
way it was set up could produce invalid operations by removing casts between
LLVM and built-in types even when the consumer did not accept the uncasted
type, or could lead to cryptic conversion errors (recursive application of the
rewrite pattern on unrealized_conversion_cast as a means to indicate failure
to eliminate casts).
In fact, the need to eliminate A->B->A unrealized_conversion_casts is not
specific to to-LLVM conversions and can be factored out into a separate type
reconciliation pass, which is achieved in this commit. While the cast operation
itself has a folder pattern, it is insufficient in most conversion passes as
the folder only applies to the second cast. Without complex legality setup in
the conversion target, the conversion infra will either consider the cast
operations valid and not fold them (a separate canonicalization would be
necessary to trigger the folding), or consider the first cast invalid upon
generation and stop with error. The pattern provided by the reconciliation pass
applies to the first cast operation instead. Furthermore, having a separate
pass makes it clear when unrealized_conversion_casts could not have been
eliminated since it is the only reason why this pass can fail.
If I am understanding this explanation right, why doesn't a folding hook on unrealized_conversion_cast get rid of these when the second pass runs?