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6 <title>Clang - Get Involved</title>
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Chris Lattnerde9a4f52007-12-13 05:42:27 +0000[diff] [blame]11
Kevinbc8e50f2007-10-05 21:18:52 +0000[diff] [blame]12<!--#include virtual="menu.html.incl"-->
Chris Lattnerde9a4f52007-12-13 05:42:27 +0000[diff] [blame]13
Kevinbc8e50f2007-10-05 21:18:52 +0000[diff] [blame]14<div id="content">
Chris Lattnerde9a4f52007-12-13 05:42:27 +0000[diff] [blame]15
Chris Lattner623ec622007-12-13 06:20:15 +0000[diff] [blame]16<h1>Getting Involved with the Clang Project</h1>
Chris Lattnerde9a4f52007-12-13 05:42:27 +0000[diff] [blame]17
Chris Lattner623ec622007-12-13 06:20:15 +0000[diff] [blame]18<p>Once you have <a href="get_started.html">checked out and built</a> clang and
19played around with it, you might be wondering what you can do to make it better
20and contribute to its development. Alternatively, maybe you just want to follow
21the development of the project to see it progress.
22</p>
Chris Lattnerde9a4f52007-12-13 05:42:27 +0000[diff] [blame]23
Chris Lattner623ec622007-12-13 06:20:15 +0000[diff] [blame]24<h2>Follow what's going on</h2>
Chris Lattnera08ee282007-10-06 05:42:47 +0000[diff] [blame]25
Chris Lattnerde9a4f52007-12-13 05:42:27 +0000[diff] [blame]26<p>Clang is a subproject of the <a href="http://llvm.org">LLVM Project</a>, but
27has its own mailing lists because the communities have people with different
Chris Lattner623ec622007-12-13 06:20:15 +0000[diff] [blame]28interests. The two clang lists are:</p>
Chris Lattnerde9a4f52007-12-13 05:42:27 +0000[diff] [blame]29
Kevinbc8e50f2007-10-05 21:18:52 +0000[diff] [blame]30<ul>
Chris Lattnerde9a4f52007-12-13 05:42:27 +0000[diff] [blame]31<li><a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-commits">cfe-commits
32</a> - This list is for patch submission/discussion.</li>
33
34<li><a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev">cfe-dev</a> -
Chris Lattner623ec622007-12-13 06:20:15 +0000[diff] [blame]35This list is for everything else clang related (questions and answers, bug
36reports, etc).</li>
37
Kevinbc8e50f2007-10-05 21:18:52 +0000[diff] [blame]38</ul>
Chris Lattnerde9a4f52007-12-13 05:42:27 +0000[diff] [blame]39
Chris Lattner623ec622007-12-13 06:20:15 +0000[diff] [blame]40<p>If you are interested in clang only, these two lists should be all
41you need. If you are interested in the LLVM optimizer and code generator,
42please consider signing up for <a
43href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">llvmdev</a> and <a
44href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvm-commits">llvm-commits</a>
45as well.</p>
Kevinbc8e50f2007-10-05 21:18:52 +0000[diff] [blame]46
47
Chris Lattner623ec622007-12-13 06:20:15 +0000[diff] [blame]48<p>The best way to talk with other developers on the project is through the <a
49href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev">cfe-dev mailing
50list</a>. The clang mailing list is a very friendly place and we welcome
51newcomers. In addition to the cfe-dev list, a significant amount of design
52discussion takes place on the <a
53href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-commits">cfe-commits mailing
54list</a>. All of these lists have archives, so you can browse through previous
55discussions or follow the list development on the web if you prefer.</p>
Kevinbc8e50f2007-10-05 21:18:52 +0000[diff] [blame]56
57
Chris Lattner623ec622007-12-13 06:20:15 +0000[diff] [blame]58<h2>Open Projects</h2>
Kevinbc8e50f2007-10-05 21:18:52 +0000[diff] [blame]59
Chris Lattner36952d92007-12-13 06:41:15 +0000[diff] [blame]60<p>Here are a few tasks that are available for newcomers to work on, depending
61on what your interests are. This list is provided to generate ideas, it is not
62intended to be comprehensive. Please ask on cfe-dev for more specifics or to
63verify that one of these isn't already completed. :)</p>
Kevinbc8e50f2007-10-05 21:18:52 +0000[diff] [blame]64
Chris Lattnera08ee282007-10-06 05:42:47 +0000[diff] [blame]65<ul>
Chris Lattner623ec622007-12-13 06:20:15 +0000[diff] [blame]66<li><b>Compile your favorite C/ObjC project with "clang -fsyntax-only"</b>:
67the clang type checker and verifier is quite close to complete (but not bug
68free!) for C and Objective C. We appreciate all reports of code that is
69rejected by the front-end, and if you notice invalid code that is not rejected
Chris Lattner80a75912007-12-19 22:17:19 +0000[diff] [blame]70by clang, that is also very important to us. For make-based projects,
Nico Weber647d3fe2008-08-26 21:36:37 +0000[diff] [blame^]71the <a href="get_started.html#ccc"><code>ccc</code></a> script in clang's
72<tt>utils</tt> folder might help to get you started.</li>
Chris Lattner623ec622007-12-13 06:20:15 +0000[diff] [blame]73
Chris Lattner36952d92007-12-13 06:41:15 +0000[diff] [blame]74<li><b>Compile your favorite C project with "clang -emit-llvm"</b>:
75The clang to LLVM converter is getting more mature, so you may be able to
Chris Lattner80a75912007-12-19 22:17:19 +0000[diff] [blame]76compile it. If not, please let us know. Again,
Nico Weber647d3fe2008-08-26 21:36:37 +0000[diff] [blame^]77<a href="get_started.html#ccc"><code>ccc</code></a> might help you. Once it
78compiles it should run. If not, that's a bug :)</li>
Chris Lattner623ec622007-12-13 06:20:15 +0000[diff] [blame]79
Chris Lattner2fbb0492007-12-13 17:25:36 +0000[diff] [blame]80<li><b>Work on code generation for Objective C</b>: -emit-llvm support for
Chris Lattnerb62f6512007-12-13 17:27:09 +0000[diff] [blame]81Objective C is basically nonexistent at the time of this writing, this is a
Chris Lattner36952d92007-12-13 06:41:15 +0000[diff] [blame]82nice open project that can be tackled incrementally (one language feature at a
83time).</li>
84
Chris Lattner2fbb0492007-12-13 17:25:36 +0000[diff] [blame]85<li><b>Debug Info Generation</b>: -emit-llvm doesn't currently support emission
86of <a href="http://llvm.org/docs/SourceLevelDebugging.html">LLVM debug info</a>
87(which the code generator turns into DWARF). Adding this should be
88straight-forward if you follow the example of what llvm-gcc generates.</li>
89
Chris Lattner36952d92007-12-13 06:41:15 +0000[diff] [blame]90<li><b>Continue work on C++ support</b>: Implementing all of C++ is a very big
Argyrios Kyrtzidis1e1cbbd2008-07-03 08:21:51 +0000[diff] [blame]91job, but there are lots of little pieces that can be picked off and implemented.
92See the <a href="cxx_status.html">C++ status report page</a> to find out what is
93missing and what is already at least partially supported.</li>
Chris Lattner36952d92007-12-13 06:41:15 +0000[diff] [blame]94
95<li><b>Improve target support</b>: The current target interfaces are heavily
96stubbed out and need to be implemented fully. See the FIXME's in TargetInfo.
97Additionally, the actual target implementations (instances of TargetInfoImpl)
98also need to be completed. This includes defining builtin macros for linux
99targets and other stuff like that.</li>
100
101<li><b>Implement 'builtin' headers</b>: GCC provides a bunch of builtin headers,
102such as stdbool.h, iso646.h, float.h, limits.h, etc. It also provides a bunch
103of target-specific headers like altivec.h and xmmintrin.h. clang will
104eventually need to provide its own copies of these (and there is a <a href=
105"http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/cfe-dev/2007-December/000560.html">lot of
106improvement</a> that can be made to the GCC ones!) that are clean-room
107implemented to avoid GPL taint.</li>
108
109<li><b>Implement a clang 'libgcc'</b>: As with the headers, clang (or a another
110related subproject of llvm) will need to implement the features that libgcc
111provides. libgcc provides a bunch of routines the code generator uses for
112"fallback" when the chip doesn't support some operation (e.g. 64-bit divide on
113a 32-bit chip). It also provides software floating point support and many other
114things. I don't think that there is a specific licensing reason to reimplement
115libgcc, but there is a lot of room for improvement in it in many
116dimensions.</li>
117
Ted Kremenekffc8a612008-07-25 23:34:29 +0000[diff] [blame]118<li><b>Implement an tool to generate code documentation</b>: Clang's
119library-based design allows it to be used by a variety of tools that reason
120about source code. One great application of Clang would be to build an
121auto-documentation system like doxygen that generates code documentation from
122source code. The advantage of using Clang for such a tool is that the tool would
123use the same preprocessor/parser/ASTs as the compiler itself, giving it a very
Chris Lattner26bc8332008-07-27 06:13:09 +0000[diff] [blame]124rich understanding of the code.</li>
Chris Lattner623ec622007-12-13 06:20:15 +0000[diff] [blame]125
Chris Lattner59f0a322008-07-27 06:10:19 +0000[diff] [blame]126<li><b>Use clang libraries to implement better versions of existing tools</b>:
127Clang is built as a set of libraries, which means that it is possible to
128implement capabilities similar to other source language tools, improving them
129in various ways. Two examples are <a href="http://distcc.samba.org/">distcc</a>
130and the <a href="http://delta.tigris.org/">delta testcase reduction tool</a>.
131The former can be improved to scale better and be more efficient. The later
132could also be faster and more efficient at reducing C-family programs if built
133on the clang preprocessor.</li>
134
Chris Lattner6bd2d272008-07-29 03:46:33 +0000[diff] [blame]135<li><b>Use clang libraries to extend Ragel with a JIT</b>: <a
136href="http://research.cs.queensu.ca/~thurston/ragel/">Ragel</a> is a state
137machine compiler that lets you embed C code into state machines and generate
138C code. It would be relatively easy to turn this into a JIT compiler using
139LLVM.</li>
140
Daniel Dunbar0df8c082008-08-22 20:18:22 +0000[diff] [blame]141<li><b>Self-testing using clang</b>: There are several neat ways to
142improve the quality of clang by self-testing. Some examples:
143<ul>
144 <li>Improve the reliability of AST printing and serialization by
145 ensuring that the AST produced by clang on an input doesn't change
146 when it is reparsed or unserialized.
147
148 <li>Improve parser reliability and error generation by automatically
149 or randomly changing the input checking that clang doesn't crash and
150 that it doesn't generate excessive errors for small input
151 changes. Manipulating the input at both the text and token levels is
152 likely to produce interesting test cases.
153</ul>
154</li>
155
Chris Lattner26bc8332008-07-27 06:13:09 +0000[diff] [blame]156</ul>
157
Chris Lattner36952d92007-12-13 06:41:15 +0000[diff] [blame]158<p>If you hit a bug with clang, it is very useful for us if you reduce the code
159that demonstrates the problem down to something small. There are many ways to
Ted Kremenek3cbe4282007-12-13 16:41:01 +0000[diff] [blame]160do this; ask on cfe-dev for advice.</p>
Chris Lattner36952d92007-12-13 06:41:15 +0000[diff] [blame]161
Kevinbc8e50f2007-10-05 21:18:52 +0000[diff] [blame]162</div>
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Chris Lattnerae3758d2007-10-11 00:38:03 +0000[diff] [blame]164</html>