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| <title>Getting Started with LLVM System for Microsoft Visual Studio</title> |
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| |
| <div class="doc_title"> |
| Getting Started with the LLVM System using Microsoft Visual Studio |
| </div> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li><a href="#overview">Overview</a> |
| <li><a href="#quickstart">Getting Started Quickly (A Summary)</a> |
| <li><a href="#requirements">Requirements</a> |
| <ol> |
| <li><a href="#hardware">Hardware</a> |
| <li><a href="#software">Software</a> |
| </ol></li> |
| |
| <li><a href="#starting">Getting Started with LLVM</a> |
| <ol> |
| <li><a href="#terminology">Terminology and Notation</a> |
| <li><a href="#objfiles">The Location of LLVM Object Files</a> |
| </ol></li> |
| |
| <li><a href="#tutorial">An Example Using the LLVM Tool Chain</a> |
| <li><a href="#problems">Common Problems</a> |
| <li><a href="#links">Links</a> |
| </ul> |
| |
| <div class="doc_author"> |
| <p>Written by: |
| <a href="mailto:jeffc@jolt-lang.org">Jeff Cohen</a> |
| </p> |
| </div> |
| |
| |
| <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| <div class="doc_section"> |
| <a name="overview"><b>Overview</b></a> |
| </div> |
| <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| |
| <div class="doc_text"> |
| |
| <p>The Visual Studio port at this time is experimental. It is suitable for |
| use only if you are writing your own compiler front end or otherwise have a |
| need to dynamically generate machine code. The JIT and interpreter are |
| functional, but it is currently not possible to generate assembly code which |
| is then assembled into an executable. You can indirectly create executables |
| by using the C back end.</p> |
| |
| <p>To emphasize, there is no C/C++ front end currently available. |
| <tt>llvm-gcc</tt> is based on GCC, which cannot be bootstrapped using VC++. |
| Eventually there should be a <tt>llvm-gcc</tt> based on Cygwin or MinGW that |
| is usable. There is also the option of generating bitcode files on Unix and |
| copying them over to Windows. But be aware the odds of linking C++ code |
| compiled with <tt>llvm-gcc</tt> with code compiled with VC++ is essentially |
| zero.</p> |
| |
| <p>The LLVM test suite cannot be run on the Visual Studio port at this |
| time.</p> |
| |
| <p>Most of the tools build and work. <tt>bugpoint</tt> does build, but does |
| not work. The other tools 'should' work, but have not been fully tested.</p> |
| |
| <p>Additional information about the LLVM directory structure and tool chain |
| can be found on the main <a href="GettingStarted.html">Getting Started</a> |
| page.</p> |
| |
| </div> |
| |
| <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| <div class="doc_section"> |
| <a name="quickstart"><b>Getting Started Quickly (A Summary)</b></a> |
| </div> |
| <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| |
| <div class="doc_text"> |
| |
| <p>Here's the short story for getting up and running quickly with LLVM:</p> |
| |
| <ol> |
| <li>Read the documentation.</li> |
| <li>Seriously, read the documentation.</li> |
| <li>Remember that you were warned twice about reading the documentation.</li> |
| |
| <li>Get the Source Code |
| <ul> |
| <li>With the distributed files: |
| <ol> |
| <li><tt>cd <i>where-you-want-llvm-to-live</i></tt> |
| <li><tt>gunzip --stdout llvm-<i>version</i>.tar.gz | tar -xvf -</tt> |
| <i> or use WinZip</i> |
| <li><tt>cd llvm</tt></li> |
| </ol></li> |
| |
| <li>With anonymous Subversion access: |
| <ol> |
| <li><tt>cd <i>where-you-want-llvm-to-live</i></tt></li> |
| <li><tt>svn co http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/llvm-top/trunk llvm-top |
| </tt></li> |
| <li><tt>make checkout MODULE=llvm</tt> |
| <li><tt>cd llvm</tt></li> |
| </ol></li> |
| </ul></li> |
| |
| <li> Use <a href="http://www.cmake.org/">CMake</a> to generate up-to-date |
| project files: |
| <ul><li>This step is currently optional as LLVM does still come with a |
| normal Visual Studio solution file, but it is not always kept up-to-date |
| and will soon be deprecated in favor of the multi-platform generator |
| CMake.</li> |
| <li>If CMake is installed then the most simple way is to just start the |
| CMake GUI, select the directory where you have LLVM extracted to, and |
| the default options should all be fine. The one option you may really |
| want to change, regardless of anything else, might be the |
| CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX setting to select a directory to INSTALL to once |
| compiling is complete.</li> |
| <li>If you use CMake to generate the Visual Studio solution and project |
| files, then the Solution will have a few extra options compared to the |
| current included one. The projects may still be built individually, but |
| to build them all do not just select all of them in batch build (as some |
| are meant as configuration projects), but rather select and build just |
| the ALL_BUILD project to build everything, or the INSTALL project, which |
| first builds the ALL_BUILD project, then installs the LLVM headers, libs, |
| and other useful things to the directory set by the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX |
| setting when you first configured CMake.</li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| |
| <li>Start Visual Studio |
| <ul> |
| <li>If you did not use CMake, then simply double click on the solution |
| file <tt>llvm/win32/llvm.sln</tt>.</li> |
| <li>If you used CMake, then the directory you created the project files, |
| the root directory will have an <tt>llvm.sln</tt> file, just |
| double-click on that to open Visual Studio.</li> |
| </ol></li> |
| |
| <li>Build the LLVM Suite: |
| <ol> |
| <li>Simply build the solution.</li> |
| <li>The Fibonacci project is a sample program that uses the JIT. Modify |
| the project's debugging properties to provide a numeric command line |
| argument. The program will print the corresponding fibonacci value.</li> |
| </ol></li> |
| |
| </ol> |
| |
| <p>It is strongly encouraged that you get the latest version from Subversion as |
| changes are continually making the VS support better.</p> |
| |
| </div> |
| |
| <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| <div class="doc_section"> |
| <a name="requirements"><b>Requirements</b></a> |
| </div> |
| <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| |
| <div class="doc_text"> |
| |
| <p>Before you begin to use the LLVM system, review the requirements given |
| below. This may save you some trouble by knowing ahead of time what hardware |
| and software you will need.</p> |
| |
| </div> |
| |
| <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| <div class="doc_subsection"> |
| <a name="hardware"><b>Hardware</b></a> |
| </div> |
| |
| <div class="doc_text"> |
| |
| <p>Any system that can adequately run Visual Studio .NET 2005 SP1 is fine. |
| The LLVM source tree and object files, libraries and executables will consume |
| approximately 3GB.</p> |
| |
| </div> |
| |
| <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| <div class="doc_subsection"><a name="software"><b>Software</b></a></div> |
| <div class="doc_text"> |
| |
| <p>You will need Visual Studio .NET 2005 SP1 or higher. The VS2005 SP1 |
| beta and the normal VS2005 still have bugs that are not completely |
| compatible. VS2003 would work except (at last check) it has a bug with |
| friend classes that you can work-around with some minor code rewriting |
| (and please submit a patch if you do). Earlier versions of Visual Studio |
| do not support the C++ standard well enough and will not work.</p> |
| |
| <p>You will also need the <a href="http://www.cmake.org/">CMake</a> build |
| system since it generates the project files you will use to build with.</p> |
| |
| <p>If you plan to modify any .y or .l files, you will need to have bison |
| and/or flex installed where Visual Studio can find them. Otherwise, you do |
| not need them and the pre-generated files that come with the source tree |
| will be used.</p> |
| |
| <p> |
| Do not install the LLVM directory tree into a path containing spaces (e.g. |
| C:\Documents and Settings\...) as the configure step will fail.</p> |
| |
| </div> |
| |
| <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| <div class="doc_section"> |
| <a name="starting"><b>Getting Started with LLVM</b></a> |
| </div> |
| <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| |
| <div class="doc_text"> |
| |
| <p>The remainder of this guide is meant to get you up and running with |
| LLVM using Visual Studio and to give you some basic information about the LLVM |
| environment.</p> |
| |
| </div> |
| |
| <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| <div class="doc_subsection"> |
| <a name="terminology">Terminology and Notation</a> |
| </div> |
| |
| <div class="doc_text"> |
| |
| <p>Throughout this manual, the following names are used to denote paths |
| specific to the local system and working environment. <i>These are not |
| environment variables you need to set but just strings used in the rest |
| of this document below</i>. In any of the examples below, simply replace |
| each of these names with the appropriate pathname on your local system. |
| All these paths are absolute:</p> |
| |
| <dl> |
| <dt>SRC_ROOT</dt> |
| <dd><p>This is the top level directory of the LLVM source tree.</p></dd> |
| |
| <dt>OBJ_ROOT</dt> |
| <dd><p>This is the top level directory of the LLVM object tree (i.e. the |
| tree where object files and compiled programs will be placed. It is |
| fixed at SRC_ROOT/win32).</p></dd> |
| </dl> |
| |
| </div> |
| |
| <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| <div class="doc_subsection"> |
| <a name="objfiles">The Location of LLVM Object Files</a> |
| </div> |
| |
| <div class="doc_text"> |
| |
| <p>The object files are placed under <tt>OBJ_ROOT/Debug</tt> for debug builds |
| and <tt>OBJ_ROOT/Release</tt> for release (optimized) builds. These include |
| both executables and libararies that your application can link against.</p> |
| |
| <p>The files that <tt>configure</tt> would create when building on Unix are |
| created by the <tt>Configure</tt> project and placed in |
| <tt>OBJ_ROOT/llvm</tt>. You application must have OBJ_ROOT in its include |
| search path just before <tt>SRC_ROOT/include</tt>.</p> |
| |
| </div> |
| |
| <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| <div class="doc_section"> |
| <a name="tutorial">An Example Using the LLVM Tool Chain</a> |
| </div> |
| <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| |
| <div class="doc_text"> |
| |
| <ol> |
| <li><p>First, create a simple C file, name it 'hello.c':</p> |
| |
| <div class="doc_code"> |
| <pre> |
| #include <stdio.h> |
| int main() { |
| printf("hello world\n"); |
| return 0; |
| } |
| </pre></div></li> |
| |
| <li><p>Next, compile the C file into a LLVM bitcode file:</p> |
| |
| <div class="doc_code"> |
| <pre> |
| % llvm-gcc -c hello.c -emit-llvm -o hello.bc |
| </pre> |
| </div> |
| |
| <p>This will create the result file <tt>hello.bc</tt> which is the LLVM |
| bitcode that corresponds the the compiled program and the library |
| facilities that it required. You can execute this file directly using |
| <tt>lli</tt> tool, compile it to native assembly with the <tt>llc</tt>, |
| optimize or analyze it further with the <tt>opt</tt> tool, etc.</p> |
| |
| <p><b>Note: while you cannot do this step on Windows, you can do it on a |
| Unix system and transfer <tt>hello.bc</tt> to Windows. Important: |
| transfer as a binary file!</b></p></li> |
| |
| <li><p>Run the program using the just-in-time compiler:</p> |
| |
| <div class="doc_code"> |
| <pre> |
| % lli hello.bc |
| </pre> |
| </div> |
| |
| <p>Note: this will only work for trivial C programs. Non-trivial programs |
| (and any C++ program) will have dependencies on the GCC runtime that |
| won't be satisfied by the Microsoft runtime libraries.</p></li> |
| |
| <li><p>Use the <tt>llvm-dis</tt> utility to take a look at the LLVM assembly |
| code:</p> |
| |
| <div class="doc_code"> |
| <pre> |
| % llvm-dis < hello.bc | more |
| </pre> |
| </div></li> |
| |
| <li><p>Compile the program to C using the LLC code generator:</p> |
| |
| <div class="doc_code"> |
| <pre> |
| % llc -march=c hello.bc |
| </pre> |
| </div></li> |
| |
| <li><p>Compile to binary using Microsoft C:</p> |
| |
| <div class="doc_code"> |
| <pre> |
| % cl hello.cbe.c |
| </pre> |
| </div> |
| |
| <p>Note: this will only work for trivial C programs. Non-trivial programs |
| (and any C++ program) will have dependencies on the GCC runtime that |
| won't be satisfied by the Microsoft runtime libraries.</p></li> |
| |
| <li><p>Execute the native code program:</p> |
| |
| <div class="doc_code"> |
| <pre> |
| % hello.cbe.exe |
| </pre> |
| </div></li> |
| </ol> |
| |
| </div> |
| |
| <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| <div class="doc_section"> |
| <a name="problems">Common Problems</a> |
| </div> |
| <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| |
| <div class="doc_text"> |
| |
| <p>If you are having problems building or using LLVM, or if you have any other |
| general questions about LLVM, please consult the <a href="FAQ.html">Frequently |
| Asked Questions</a> page.</p> |
| |
| </div> |
| |
| <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| <div class="doc_section"> |
| <a name="links">Links</a> |
| </div> |
| <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| |
| <div class="doc_text"> |
| |
| <p>This document is just an <b>introduction</b> to how to use LLVM to do |
| some simple things... there are many more interesting and complicated things |
| that you can do that aren't documented here (but we'll gladly accept a patch |
| if you want to write something up!). For more information about LLVM, check |
| out:</p> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li><a href="http://llvm.org/">LLVM homepage</a></li> |
| <li><a href="http://llvm.org/doxygen/">LLVM doxygen tree</a></li> |
| <li><a href="http://llvm.org/docs/Projects.html">Starting a Project |
| that Uses LLVM</a></li> |
| </ul> |
| |
| </div> |
| |
| <!-- *********************************************************************** --> |
| |
| <hr> |
| <address> |
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| |
| <a href="mailto:jeffc@jolt-lang.org">Jeff Cohen</a><br> |
| <a href="http://llvm.org">The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure</a><br> |
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