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gerrit-public.fairphone.software / toolchain / llvm-project / 016c00a3115e272ffd382750ac96d1b6122de56d / . / llvm / docs / ReleaseNotes.html
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Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
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4<head>
Reid Spencere4190fa2004-11-18 18:38:58 +0000[diff] [blame]5 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]6 <link rel="stylesheet" href="llvm.css" type="text/css">
Jeffrey Yasskin0830b972010-01-28 01:14:43 +0000[diff] [blame]7 <title>LLVM 2.7 Release Notes</title>
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]8</head>
9<body>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]10
Jeffrey Yasskin0830b972010-01-28 01:14:43 +0000[diff] [blame]11<div class="doc_title">LLVM 2.7 Release Notes</div>
Mikhail Glushenkov024f7cf2008-10-13 02:08:34 +0000[diff] [blame]12
Chris Lattnerc871bac2010-03-17 04:02:39 +0000[diff] [blame]13<img align=right src="http://llvm.org/img/DragonSmall.png"
Gabor Greif27b166352010-04-22 10:21:43 +0000[diff] [blame]14 width="136" height="136" alt="LLVM Dragon Logo">
Chris Lattnerc871bac2010-03-17 04:02:39 +0000[diff] [blame]15
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]16<ol>
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]17 <li><a href="#intro">Introduction</a></li>
Chris Lattnerf5cd9862008-10-13 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]18 <li><a href="#subproj">Sub-project Status Update</a></li>
Jeffrey Yasskin0830b972010-01-28 01:14:43 +0000[diff] [blame]19 <li><a href="#externalproj">External Projects Using LLVM 2.7</a></li>
20 <li><a href="#whatsnew">What's New in LLVM 2.7?</a></li>
Chris Lattner77a51732004-04-30 22:17:12 +0000[diff] [blame]21 <li><a href="GettingStarted.html">Installation Instructions</a></li>
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]22 <li><a href="#portability">Portability and Supported Platforms</a></li>
Dan Gohmanad888912008-10-14 16:23:02 +0000[diff] [blame]23 <li><a href="#knownproblems">Known Problems</a></li>
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]24 <li><a href="#additionalinfo">Additional Information</a></li>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]25</ol>
26
Chris Lattner020e1fc2004-05-23 21:07:27 +0000[diff] [blame]27<div class="doc_author">
Dan Gohmanad888912008-10-14 16:23:02 +0000[diff] [blame]28 <p>Written by the <a href="http://llvm.org">LLVM Team</a></p>
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]29</div>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]30
Chris Lattner06971182010-04-13 06:37:00 +0000[diff] [blame]31<!--
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]32<h1 style="color:red">These are in-progress notes for the upcoming LLVM 2.8
Jeffrey Yasskin0830b972010-01-28 01:14:43 +0000[diff] [blame]33release.<br>
34You may prefer the
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]35<a href="http://llvm.org/releases/2.6/docs/ReleaseNotes.html">LLVM 2.7
Chris Lattner06971182010-04-13 06:37:00 +0000[diff] [blame]36Release Notes</a>.</h1>-->
Jeffrey Yasskin0830b972010-01-28 01:14:43 +0000[diff] [blame]37
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]38<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]39<div class="doc_section">
40 <a name="intro">Introduction</a>
41</div>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]42<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
43
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]44<div class="doc_text">
45
Chris Lattner1e4d5bc2008-10-13 17:57:36 +0000[diff] [blame]46<p>This document contains the release notes for the LLVM Compiler
Jeffrey Yasskin0830b972010-01-28 01:14:43 +0000[diff] [blame]47Infrastructure, release 2.7. Here we describe the status of LLVM, including
Chris Lattner1e4d5bc2008-10-13 17:57:36 +0000[diff] [blame]48major improvements from the previous release and significant known problems.
Mikhail Glushenkov25422542009-03-01 18:09:47 +0000[diff] [blame]49All LLVM releases may be downloaded from the <a
Chris Lattner1e4d5bc2008-10-13 17:57:36 +0000[diff] [blame]50href="http://llvm.org/releases/">LLVM releases web site</a>.</p>
Chris Lattner62495762003-10-02 16:38:05 +0000[diff] [blame]51
Chris Lattnerb5bb5972004-12-07 08:04:13 +0000[diff] [blame]52<p>For more information about LLVM, including information about the latest
Chris Lattnera69595e2005-10-29 07:07:09 +0000[diff] [blame]53release, please check out the <a href="http://llvm.org/">main LLVM
Chris Lattnere7525b52003-10-07 21:38:31 +0000[diff] [blame]54web site</a>. If you have questions or comments, the <a
Chris Lattner0b1c9a52010-03-17 04:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]55href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">LLVM Developer's
56Mailing List</a> is a good place to send them.</p>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]57
Mikhail Glushenkov024f7cf2008-10-13 02:08:34 +0000[diff] [blame]58<p>Note that if you are reading this file from a Subversion checkout or the
Chris Lattner0a1fd102007-09-21 03:54:09 +0000[diff] [blame]59main LLVM web page, this document applies to the <i>next</i> release, not the
Gabor Greif355f81c2008-10-14 11:00:32 +0000[diff] [blame]60current one. To see the release notes for a specific release, please see the
Chris Lattner0a1fd102007-09-21 03:54:09 +0000[diff] [blame]61<a href="http://llvm.org/releases/">releases page</a>.</p>
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]62
63</div>
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]64
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]65
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]66<!--
67Almost dead code.
68 include/llvm/Analysis/LiveValues.h => Dan
69 lib/Transforms/IPO/MergeFunctions.cpp => consider for 2.8.
70 llvm/Analysis/PointerTracking.h => Edwin wants this, consider for 2.8.
Chris Lattner06971182010-04-13 06:37:00 +0000[diff] [blame]71 ABCD, GEPSplitterPass
Chris Lattner89ea59d2010-01-16 21:25:13 +0000[diff] [blame]72 MSIL backend?
Chris Lattner10a3cc42010-03-17 06:41:58 +0000[diff] [blame]73 lib/Transforms/Utils/SSI.cpp -> ABCD depends on it.
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]74-->
75
76
Jeffrey Yasskin0830b972010-01-28 01:14:43 +0000[diff] [blame]77<!-- Features that need text if they're finished for 2.7:
Chris Lattnera67df2d2010-04-22 06:28:20 +0000[diff] [blame]78 combiner-aa?
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]79 strong phi elim
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]80 llvm.dbg.value: variable debug info for optimized code
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]81 loop dependence analysis
Chris Lattner2b8a52e2008-02-10 07:46:44 +0000[diff] [blame]82 -->
Mikhail Glushenkov024f7cf2008-10-13 02:08:34 +0000[diff] [blame]83
Chris Lattnerc4d68542008-10-12 19:47:48 +0000[diff] [blame]84 <!-- for announcement email:
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]85 Logo web page.
86 llvm devmtg
87 compiler_rt
88 KLEE web page at klee.llvm.org
89 Many new papers added to /pubs/
Chris Lattner10a3cc42010-03-17 06:41:58 +0000[diff] [blame]90 Mention gcc plugin.
Chris Lattnerd02da042009-02-25 06:34:50 +0000[diff] [blame]91 -->
Chris Lattner2b8a52e2008-02-10 07:46:44 +0000[diff] [blame]92
Chris Lattnerf5cd9862008-10-13 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]93<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
94<div class="doc_section">
95 <a name="subproj">Sub-project Status Update</a>
Chris Lattner625a3d82008-06-08 21:34:41 +0000[diff] [blame]96</div>
Chris Lattnerf5cd9862008-10-13 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]97<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
Chris Lattner625a3d82008-06-08 21:34:41 +0000[diff] [blame]98
99<div class="doc_text">
Chris Lattnerc75fd522008-06-08 21:58:17 +0000[diff] [blame]100<p>
Jeffrey Yasskin0830b972010-01-28 01:14:43 +0000[diff] [blame]101The LLVM 2.7 distribution currently consists of code from the core LLVM
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]102repository (which roughly includes the LLVM optimizers, code generators
103and supporting tools), the Clang repository and the llvm-gcc repository. In
104addition to this code, the LLVM Project includes other sub-projects that are in
105development. Here we include updates on these subprojects.
Bill Wendlingf170d2e2009-03-02 04:28:57 +0000[diff] [blame]106</p>
Chris Lattnerf5cd9862008-10-13 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]107
Chris Lattnerc75fd522008-06-08 21:58:17 +0000[diff] [blame]108</div>
109
Chris Lattnerf5cd9862008-10-13 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]110
Chris Lattnerc75fd522008-06-08 21:58:17 +0000[diff] [blame]111<!--=========================================================================-->
Chris Lattnerf5cd9862008-10-13 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]112<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattner44c09cd2008-10-13 18:11:54 +0000[diff] [blame]113<a name="clang">Clang: C/C++/Objective-C Frontend Toolkit</a>
Chris Lattnerc75fd522008-06-08 21:58:17 +0000[diff] [blame]114</div>
115
116<div class="doc_text">
117
Douglas Gregorc5b5c052010-04-22 20:42:40 +0000[diff] [blame]118<p><a href="http://clang.llvm.org/">Clang</a> is an LLVM front end for the C, C++, and Objective-C languages. Clang aims to provide a better user experience through expressive diagnostics, a high level of conformance to language standards, fast compilation, and low memory use. Like LLVM, Clang provides a modular, library-based architecture that makes it suitable for creating or integrating with other development tools. Clang is considered a production-quality compiler for C and Objective-C on x86 (32- and 64-bit).</p>
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]119
Jeffrey Yasskin0830b972010-01-28 01:14:43 +0000[diff] [blame]120<p>In the LLVM 2.7 time-frame, the Clang team has made many improvements:</p>
Bill Wendlingef362462008-10-27 09:27:33 +0000[diff] [blame]121
Daniel Dunbarc11b40f2008-10-14 23:25:09 +0000[diff] [blame]122<ul>
Douglas Gregorc5b5c052010-04-22 20:42:40 +0000[diff] [blame]123
124<li>C++ Support: Clang is now capable of self-hosting! While still alpha-quality, Clang's C++ support has matured enough to build LLVM and Clang, and C++ is now enabled by default. See the <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/cxx_compatibility.html">Clang C++ compatibility page</a> for common C++ migration issues.</li>
125
126<li>New warnings: Clang contains a number of new warnings, including control-flow warnings (unreachable code, missing return statements in a non-<code>void</code> function, etc.), sign-comparison warnings, and improved format-string warnings.</li>
Daniel Dunbareb4bc7f2010-03-25 16:09:18 +0000[diff] [blame]127
Daniel Dunbareb4bc7f2010-03-25 16:09:18 +0000[diff] [blame]128<li>CIndex API and Python bindings: Clang now includes a C API as part of the
129CIndex library. Although we make make some changes to the API in the future, it
130is intended to be stable and has been designed for use by external projects. See
131the Clang
132doxygen <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/doxygen/group__CINDEX.html">CIndex</a>
Wesley Peck9bc5e8f2010-04-22 14:19:00 +0000[diff] [blame]133documentation for more details. The CIndex API also includes a preliminary
Daniel Dunbareb4bc7f2010-03-25 16:09:18 +0000[diff] [blame]134set of Python bindings.</li>
135
136<li>ARM Support: Clang now has ABI support for both the Darwin and Linux ARM
137ABIs. Coupled with many improvements to the LLVM ARM backend, Clang is now
138suitable for use as a a beta quality ARM compiler.</li>
Bill Wendling87adbe42009-03-02 04:28:18 +0000[diff] [blame]139</ul>
Chris Lattner44c09cd2008-10-13 18:11:54 +0000[diff] [blame]140</div>
141
142<!--=========================================================================-->
143<div class="doc_subsection">
144<a name="clangsa">Clang Static Analyzer</a>
145</div>
146
147<div class="doc_text">
148
Chris Lattner2284b6a2010-04-22 06:38:11 +0000[diff] [blame]149<p>The <a href="http://clang-analyzer.llvm.org/">Clang Static Analyzer</a>
150 project is an effort to use static source code analysis techniques to
151 automatically find bugs in C and Objective-C programs (and hopefully <a
152 href="http://clang-analyzer.llvm.org/dev_cxx.html">C++ in the
153 future</a>!). The tool is very good at finding bugs that occur on specific
154 paths through code, such as on error conditions.</p>
Chris Lattnerbcffa5a2008-10-14 00:52:49 +0000[diff] [blame]155
Chris Lattner2284b6a2010-04-22 06:38:11 +0000[diff] [blame]156<p>In the LLVM 2.7 time-frame, the analyzer core has made several major and
157 minor improvements, including better support for tracking the fields of
158 structures, initial support (not enabled by default yet) for doing
159 interprocedural (cross-function) analysis, and new checks have been added.
160</p>
Chris Lattnerc75fd522008-06-08 21:58:17 +0000[diff] [blame]161
162</div>
163
Chris Lattnerf5cd9862008-10-13 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]164<!--=========================================================================-->
165<div class="doc_subsection">
Nicolas Geoffraye5ec9322008-10-14 19:23:04 +0000[diff] [blame]166<a name="vmkit">VMKit: JVM/CLI Virtual Machine Implementation</a>
Chris Lattnerf5cd9862008-10-13 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]167</div>
168
169<div class="doc_text">
170<p>
Nicolas Geoffraye5ec9322008-10-14 19:23:04 +0000[diff] [blame]171The <a href="http://vmkit.llvm.org/">VMKit project</a> is an implementation of
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]172a JVM and a CLI Virtual Machine (Microsoft .NET is an
173implementation of the CLI) using LLVM for static and just-in-time
174compilation.</p>
Chris Lattnerf5cd9862008-10-13 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]175
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]176<p>
Chris Lattneref2e5732010-03-29 18:34:13 +0000[diff] [blame]177With the release of LLVM 2.7, VMKit has shifted to a great framework for writing
178virtual machines. VMKit now offers precise and efficient garbage collection with
179multi-threading support, thanks to the MMTk memory management toolkit, as well
180as just in time and ahead of time compilation with LLVM. The major changes in
181VMKit 0.27 are:</p>
Chris Lattnerf5cd9862008-10-13 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]182
Nicolas Geoffraye5ec9322008-10-14 19:23:04 +0000[diff] [blame]183<ul>
184
Chris Lattneref2e5732010-03-29 18:34:13 +0000[diff] [blame]185<li>Garbage collection: VMKit now uses the MMTk toolkit for garbage collectors.
186 The first collector to be ported is the MarkSweep collector, which is precise,
187 and drastically improves the performance of VMKit.</li>
188<li>Line number information in the JVM: by using the debug metadata of LLVM, the
189 JVM now supports precise line number information, useful when printing a stack
190 trace.</li>
191<li>Interface calls in the JVM: we implemented a variant of the Interface Method
192 Table technique for interface calls in the JVM.
193</li>
Nicolas Geoffraye5ec9322008-10-14 19:23:04 +0000[diff] [blame]194
195</ul>
Chris Lattnerf5cd9862008-10-13 18:01:01 +0000[diff] [blame]196</div>
197
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]198
199<!--=========================================================================-->
200<div class="doc_subsection">
201<a name="compiler-rt">compiler-rt: Compiler Runtime Library</a>
202</div>
203
204<div class="doc_text">
205<p>
206The new LLVM <a href="http://compiler-rt.llvm.org/">compiler-rt project</a>
207is a simple library that provides an implementation of the low-level
208target-specific hooks required by code generation and other runtime components.
209For example, when compiling for a 32-bit target, converting a double to a 64-bit
210unsigned integer is compiled into a runtime call to the "__fixunsdfdi"
211function. The compiler-rt library provides highly optimized implementations of
212this and other low-level routines (some are 3x faster than the equivalent
213libgcc routines).</p>
214
215<p>
216All of the code in the compiler-rt project is available under the standard LLVM
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]217License, a "BSD-style" license. New in LLVM 2.7: compiler_rt now
218supports ARM targets.</p>
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]219
220</div>
221
222<!--=========================================================================-->
223<div class="doc_subsection">
Duncan Sands92452b92010-04-02 09:23:15 +0000[diff] [blame]224<a name="dragonegg">DragonEgg: llvm-gcc ported to gcc-4.5</a>
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]225</div>
226
227<div class="doc_text">
228<p>
Duncan Sands92452b92010-04-02 09:23:15 +0000[diff] [blame]229<a href="http://dragonegg.llvm.org/">DragonEgg</a> is a port of llvm-gcc to
230gcc-4.5. Unlike llvm-gcc, which makes many intrusive changes to the underlying
231gcc-4.2 code, dragonegg in theory does not require any gcc-4.5 modifications
232whatsoever (currently one small patch is needed). This is thanks to the new
233<a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/plugins">gcc plugin architecture</a>, which
234makes it possible to modify the behaviour of gcc at runtime by loading a plugin,
235which is nothing more than a dynamic library which conforms to the gcc plugin
236interface. DragonEgg is a gcc plugin that causes the LLVM optimizers to be run
237instead of the gcc optimizers, and the LLVM code generators instead of the gcc
238code generators, just like llvm-gcc. To use it, you add
239"-fplugin=path/dragonegg.so" to the gcc-4.5 command line, and gcc-4.5 magically
240becomes llvm-gcc-4.5!
241</p>
242
243<p>
244DragonEgg is still a work in progress. Currently C works very well, while C++,
245Ada and Fortran work fairly well. All other languages either don't work at all,
246or only work poorly. For the moment only the x86-32 and x86-64 targets are
Duncan Sands4dd125e2010-04-20 19:40:58 +0000[diff] [blame]247supported, and only on linux and darwin (darwin needs an additional gcc patch).
Duncan Sands92452b92010-04-02 09:23:15 +0000[diff] [blame]248</p>
249
250<p>
Duncan Sandsfe291172010-04-21 13:51:48 +0000[diff] [blame]251DragonEgg is a new project which is seeing its first release with llvm-2.7.
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]252</p>
253
254</div>
255
256
257<!--=========================================================================-->
258<div class="doc_subsection">
259<a name="mc">llvm-mc: Machine Code Toolkit</a>
260</div>
261
262<div class="doc_text">
263<p>
Chris Lattner2284b6a2010-04-22 06:38:11 +0000[diff] [blame]264The LLVM Machine Code (aka MC) sub-project of LLVM was created to solve a number
265of problems in the realm of assembly, disassembly, object file format handling,
266and a number of other related areas that CPU instruction-set level tools work
267in. It is a sub-project of LLVM which provides it with a number of advantages
268over other compilers that do not have tightly integrated assembly-level tools.
269For a gentle introduction, please see the <a
270href="http://blog.llvm.org/2010/04/intro-to-llvm-mc-project.html">Intro to the
271LLVM MC Project Blog Post</a>.
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]272</p>
273
Chris Lattner2284b6a2010-04-22 06:38:11 +0000[diff] [blame]274<p>2.7 includes major parts of the work required by the new MC Project. A few
275 targets have been refactored to support it, and work is underway to support a
276 native assembler in LLVM. This work is not complete in LLVM 2.7, but you has
277 made substantially more progress on LLVM mainline.</p>
278
279<p>One minor example of what MC can do is to transcode an AT&amp;T syntax
Gabor Greifd80517c2010-04-22 10:25:23 +0000[diff] [blame]280 X86 .s file into intel syntax. You can do this with something like:</p>
Chris Lattner2284b6a2010-04-22 06:38:11 +0000[diff] [blame]281<pre>
282 llvm-mc foo.s -output-asm-variant=1 -o foo-intel.s
283</pre>
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]284
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]285</div>
286
287
Chris Lattner53e06f92009-02-26 22:33:38 +0000[diff] [blame]288<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
289<div class="doc_section">
Jeffrey Yasskin0830b972010-01-28 01:14:43 +0000[diff] [blame]290 <a name="externalproj">External Open Source Projects Using LLVM 2.7</a>
Chris Lattner53e06f92009-02-26 22:33:38 +0000[diff] [blame]291</div>
292<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
293
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]294<div class="doc_text">
295
296<p>An exciting aspect of LLVM is that it is used as an enabling technology for
297 a lot of other language and tools projects. This section lists some of the
Jeffrey Yasskin0830b972010-01-28 01:14:43 +0000[diff] [blame]298 projects that have already been updated to work with LLVM 2.7.</p>
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]299</div>
300
Chris Lattner53e06f92009-02-26 22:33:38 +0000[diff] [blame]301<!--=========================================================================-->
302<div class="doc_subsection">
303<a name="pure">Pure</a>
304</div>
305
306<div class="doc_text">
307<p>
Chris Lattnerd1094e02009-03-02 02:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]308<a href="http://pure-lang.googlecode.com/">Pure</a>
309is an algebraic/functional programming language based on term rewriting.
Chris Lattner53e06f92009-02-26 22:33:38 +0000[diff] [blame]310Programs are collections of equations which are used to evaluate expressions in
311a symbolic fashion. Pure offers dynamic typing, eager and lazy evaluation,
Mikhail Glushenkov25422542009-03-01 18:09:47 +0000[diff] [blame]312lexical closures, a hygienic macro system (also based on term rewriting),
Chris Lattner53e06f92009-02-26 22:33:38 +0000[diff] [blame]313built-in list and matrix support (including list and matrix comprehensions) and
314an easy-to-use C interface. The interpreter uses LLVM as a backend to
315 JIT-compile Pure programs to fast native code.</p>
316
Chris Lattner6aba4862010-03-17 17:25:49 +0000[diff] [blame]317<p>Pure versions 0.43 and later have been tested and are known to work with
318LLVM 2.7 (and continue to work with older LLVM releases >= 2.5).</p>
319
Chris Lattner53e06f92009-02-26 22:33:38 +0000[diff] [blame]320</div>
321
Chris Lattnerfb23a962009-02-28 18:58:01 +0000[diff] [blame]322<!--=========================================================================-->
323<div class="doc_subsection">
324<a name="RoadsendPHP">Roadsend PHP</a>
325</div>
326
327<div class="doc_text">
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]328<p>
329<a href="http://code.roadsend.com/rphp">Roadsend PHP</a> (rphp) is an open
Chris Lattner0c72d8f2009-03-02 19:07:24 +0000[diff] [blame]330source implementation of the PHP programming
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]331language that uses LLVM for its optimizer, JIT and static compiler. This is a
Chris Lattnerc871bac2010-03-17 04:02:39 +0000[diff] [blame]332reimplementation of an earlier project that is now based on LLVM.
Chris Lattner6aba4862010-03-17 17:25:49 +0000[diff] [blame]333</p>
Chris Lattnerfb23a962009-02-28 18:58:01 +0000[diff] [blame]334</div>
Chris Lattner53e06f92009-02-26 22:33:38 +0000[diff] [blame]335
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]336<!--=========================================================================-->
337<div class="doc_subsection">
338<a name="UnladenSwallow">Unladen Swallow</a>
339</div>
340
341<div class="doc_text">
342<p>
343<a href="http://code.google.com/p/unladen-swallow/">Unladen Swallow</a> is a
344branch of <a href="http://python.org/">Python</a> intended to be fully
345compatible and significantly faster. It uses LLVM's optimization passes and JIT
Chris Lattner5b59a732010-03-18 06:52:15 +0000[diff] [blame]346compiler.
Chris Lattnerc871bac2010-03-17 04:02:39 +0000[diff] [blame]347</p>
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]348</div>
349
350<!--=========================================================================-->
351<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattnerb4a02792010-03-29 17:50:39 +0000[diff] [blame]352<a name="tce">TTA-based Codesign Environment (TCE)</a>
353</div>
354
355<div class="doc_text">
356<p>
357<a href="http://tce.cs.tut.fi/">TCE</a> is a toolset for designing
358application-specific processors (ASP) based on the Transport triggered
359architecture (TTA). The toolset provides a complete co-design flow from C/C++
360programs down to synthesizable VHDL and parallel program binaries. Processor
361customization points include the register files, function units, supported
362operations, and the interconnection network.</p>
363
364<p>TCE uses llvm-gcc/Clang and LLVM for C/C++ language support, target
365independent optimizations and also for parts of code generation. It generates
366new LLVM-based code generators "on the fly" for the designed TTA processors and
367loads them in to the compiler backend as runtime libraries to avoid per-target
368recompilation of larger parts of the compiler chain.</p>
369
370</div>
Chris Lattnerc75fd522008-06-08 21:58:17 +0000[diff] [blame]371
John Criswell9003e0f2010-04-06 14:52:14 +0000[diff] [blame]372<!--=========================================================================-->
373<div class="doc_subsection">
374<a name="safecode">SAFECode Compiler</a>
375</div>
376
377<div class="doc_text">
378<p>
379<a href="http://safecode.cs.illinois.edu">SAFECode</a> is a memory safe C
380compiler built using LLVM. It takes standard, unannotated C code, analyzes the
381code to ensure that memory accesses and array indexing operations are safe, and
382instruments the code with run-time checks when safety cannot be proven
383statically.
384</p>
385</div>
386
Chris Lattnerad280412010-04-22 17:28:36 +0000[diff] [blame]387<!--=========================================================================-->
388<div class="doc_subsection">
389<a name="icedtea">IcedTea Java Virtual Machine Implementation</a>
390</div>
John Criswell9003e0f2010-04-06 14:52:14 +0000[diff] [blame]391
Chris Lattnerad280412010-04-22 17:28:36 +0000[diff] [blame]392<div class="doc_text">
393<p>
394<a href="http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/Main_Page">IcedTea</a> provides a
395harness to build OpenJDK using only free software build tools and to provide
396replacements for the not-yet free parts of OpenJDK. One of the extensions that
397IcedTea provides is a new JIT compiler named <a
398href="http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/ZeroSharkFaq">Shark</a> which uses LLVM
399to provide native code generation without introducing processor-dependent
400code.
401</p>
402<p>Icedtea6 1.8 and later have been tested and are known to work with
403LLVM 2.7 (and continue to work with older LLVM releases >= 2.6 as well).
404</p>
405</div>
406
407<!--=========================================================================-->
408<div class="doc_subsection">
409<a name="llvm-lua">LLVM-Lua</a>
410</div>
411
412<div class="doc_text">
413<p>
414<a href="http://code.google.com/p/llvm-lua/">LLVM-Lua</a> uses LLVM
415 to add JIT and static compiling support to the Lua VM. Lua
416bytecode is analyzed to remove type checks, then LLVM is used to compile the
417bytecode down to machine code.
418</p>
419<p>LLVM-Lua 1.2.0 have been tested and is known to work with LLVM 2.7.
420</p>
421</div>
Chris Lattnerc75fd522008-06-08 21:58:17 +0000[diff] [blame]422<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
423<div class="doc_section">
Jeffrey Yasskin0830b972010-01-28 01:14:43 +0000[diff] [blame]424 <a name="whatsnew">What's New in LLVM 2.7?</a>
Chris Lattnerc75fd522008-06-08 21:58:17 +0000[diff] [blame]425</div>
426<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
427
Chris Lattnerb7bc2aa2008-06-08 22:59:35 +0000[diff] [blame]428<div class="doc_text">
429
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]430<p>This release includes a huge number of bug fixes, performance tweaks and
Chris Lattner1e4d5bc2008-10-13 17:57:36 +0000[diff] [blame]431minor improvements. Some of the major improvements and new features are listed
432in this section.
Chris Lattnerb7bc2aa2008-06-08 22:59:35 +0000[diff] [blame]433</p>
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]434
Chris Lattnera67df2d2010-04-22 06:28:20 +0000[diff] [blame]435</div>
436
437<!--=========================================================================-->
438<div class="doc_subsection">
439<a name="orgchanges">LLVM Community Changes</a>
440</div>
441
442<div class="doc_text">
443
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]444<p>In addition to changes to the code, between LLVM 2.6 and 2.7, a number of
445organization changes have happened:
446</p>
447
448<ul>
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]449<li>LLVM has a new <a href="http://llvm.org/Logo.html">official logo</a>!</li>
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]450
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]451<li>Ted Kremenek and Doug Gregor have stepped forward as <a
452 href="http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#owners">Code Owners</a> of the
Chris Lattnera67df2d2010-04-22 06:28:20 +0000[diff] [blame]453 Clang static analyzer and the Clang frontend, respectively.</li>
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]454
455<li>LLVM now has an <a href="http://blog.llvm.org">official Blog</a> at
456 <a href="http://blog.llvm.org">http://blog.llvm.org</a>. This is a great way
457 to learn about new LLVM-related features as they are implemented. Several
458 features in this release are already explained on the blog.</li>
459
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]460<li>The LLVM web pages are now checked into the SVN server, in the "www",
461 "www-pubs" and "www-releases" SVN modules. Previously they were hidden in a
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]462 largely inaccessible old CVS server.</li>
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]463
464<li><a href="http://llvm.org">llvm.org</a> is now hosted on a new (and much
465 faster) server. It is still graciously hosted at the University of Illinois
466 of Urbana Champaign.</li>
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]467</ul>
Chris Lattnerb7bc2aa2008-06-08 22:59:35 +0000[diff] [blame]468</div>
469
Chris Lattnerc75fd522008-06-08 21:58:17 +0000[diff] [blame]470<!--=========================================================================-->
Chris Lattner625a3d82008-06-08 21:34:41 +0000[diff] [blame]471<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattnercdc44ed2008-02-06 18:00:06 +0000[diff] [blame]472<a name="majorfeatures">Major New Features</a>
473</div>
474
475<div class="doc_text">
476
Jeffrey Yasskin0830b972010-01-28 01:14:43 +0000[diff] [blame]477<p>LLVM 2.7 includes several major new capabilities:</p>
Chris Lattner97beb512007-05-14 06:56:09 +0000[diff] [blame]478
479<ul>
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]480<li>2.7 includes initial support for the <a
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]481 href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroBlaze">MicroBlaze</a> target.
482 MicroBlaze is a soft processor core designed for Xilinx FPGAs.</li>
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]483
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]484<li>2.7 includes a new LLVM IR "extensible metadata" feature. This feature
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]485 supports many different use cases, including allowing front-end authors to
486 encode source level information into LLVM IR, which is consumed by later
487 language-specific passes. This is a great way to do high-level optimizations
488 like devirtualization, type-based alias analysis, etc. See the <a
489 href="http://blog.llvm.org/2010/04/extensible-metadata-in-llvm-ir.html">
490 Extensible Metadata Blog Post</a> for more information.</li>
491
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]492<li>2.7 encodes <a href="SourceLevelDebugging.html">debug information</a>
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]493in a completely new way, built on extensible metadata. The new implementation
494is much more memory efficient and paves the way for improvements to optimized
495code debugging experience.</li>
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]496
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]497<li>2.7 now directly supports taking the address of a label and doing an
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]498 indirect branch through a pointer. This is particularly useful for
499 interpreter loops, and is used to implement the GCC "address of label"
500 extension. For more information, see the <a
501href="http://blog.llvm.org/2010/01/address-of-label-and-indirect-branches.html">
502Address of Label and Indirect Branches in LLVM IR Blog Post</a>.
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]503
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]504<li>2.7 is the first release to start supporting APIs for assembling and
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]505 disassembling target machine code. These APIs are useful for a variety of
506 low level clients, and are surfaced in the new "enhanced disassembly" API.
507 For more information see the <a
508 href="http://blog.llvm.org/2010/01/x86-disassembler.html">The X86
509 Disassembler Blog Post</a> for more information.</li>
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]510
Chris Lattner2284b6a2010-04-22 06:38:11 +0000[diff] [blame]511<li>2.7 includes major parts of the work required by the new MC Project,
512 see the <a href="#mc">MC update above</a> for more information.</li>
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]513
Chris Lattner458e79f2008-02-10 08:18:42 +0000[diff] [blame]514</ul>
Chris Lattner10a3cc42010-03-17 06:41:58 +0000[diff] [blame]515
Chris Lattner97beb512007-05-14 06:56:09 +0000[diff] [blame]516</div>
517
Chris Lattner0a1fd102007-09-21 03:54:09 +0000[diff] [blame]518<!--=========================================================================-->
519<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattnerd1094e02009-03-02 02:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]520<a name="coreimprovements">LLVM IR and Core Improvements</a>
Chris Lattnerdd6acc02008-02-10 08:17:19 +0000[diff] [blame]521</div>
522
523<div class="doc_text">
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]524<p>LLVM IR has several new features for better support of new targets and that
525expose new optimization opportunities:</p>
Chris Lattnerdd6acc02008-02-10 08:17:19 +0000[diff] [blame]526
Chris Lattnerb7112222008-06-05 06:25:56 +0000[diff] [blame]527<ul>
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]528<li>LLVM IR now supports a 16-bit "half float" data type through <a
529 href="LangRef.html#int_fp16">two new intrinsics</a> and APFloat support.</li>
530<li>LLVM IR supports two new <a href="LangRef.html#fnattrs">function
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]531 attributes</a>: inlinehint and alignstack(n). The former is a hint to the
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]532 optimizer that a function was declared 'inline' and thus the inliner should
533 weight it higher when considering inlining it. The later
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]534 indicates to the code generator that the function diverges from the platform
535 ABI on stack alignment.</li>
536<li>The new <a href="LangRef.html#int_objectsize">llvm.objectsize</a> intrinsic
537 allows the optimizer to infer the sizes of memory objects in some cases.
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]538 This intrinsic is used to implement the GCC <tt>__builtin_object_size</tt>
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]539 extension.</li>
Chris Lattnera67df2d2010-04-22 06:28:20 +0000[diff] [blame]540<li>LLVM IR now supports marking load and store instructions with <a
541 href="LangRef.html#i_load">"non-temporal" hints</a> (building on the new
542 metadata feature). This hint encourages the code
543 generator to generate non-temporal accesses when possible, which are useful
544 for code that is carefully managing cache behavior. Currently, only the
545 X86 backend provides target support for this feature.</li>
546
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]547<li>LLVM 2.7 has pre-alpha support for <a
Gabor Greif862b3532010-04-22 10:11:24 +0000[diff] [blame]548 href="LangRef.html#t_union">unions in LLVM IR</a>.
Chris Lattnera67df2d2010-04-22 06:28:20 +0000[diff] [blame]549 Unfortunately, this support is not really usable in 2.7, so if you're
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]550 interested in pushing it forward, please help contribute to LLVM mainline.</li>
Gabor Greif27b166352010-04-22 10:21:43 +0000[diff] [blame]551
Chris Lattnerdd6acc02008-02-10 08:17:19 +0000[diff] [blame]552</ul>
Mikhail Glushenkov024f7cf2008-10-13 02:08:34 +0000[diff] [blame]553
Chris Lattnerdd6acc02008-02-10 08:17:19 +0000[diff] [blame]554</div>
555
556<!--=========================================================================-->
557<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattner2b8a52e2008-02-10 07:46:44 +0000[diff] [blame]558<a name="optimizer">Optimizer Improvements</a>
559</div>
560
561<div class="doc_text">
562
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]563<p>In addition to a large array of minor performance tweaks and bug fixes, this
Chris Lattner25879d72008-10-13 21:50:36 +0000[diff] [blame]564release includes a few major enhancements and additions to the optimizers:</p>
Chris Lattner2b8a52e2008-02-10 07:46:44 +0000[diff] [blame]565
566<ul>
567
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]568<li>The inliner reuses now merges arrays stack objects in different callees when
569 inlining multiple call sites into one function. This reduces the stack size
570 of the resultant function.</li>
571<li>The -basicaa alias analysis pass (which is the default) has been improved to
572 be less dependent on "type safe" pointers. It can now look through bitcasts
573 and other constructs more aggressively, allowing better load/store
574 optimization.</li>
575<li>The load elimination optimization in the GVN Pass [<a
576href="http://blog.llvm.org/2009/12/introduction-to-load-elimination-in-gvn.html">intro
577 blog post</a>] has been substantially improved to be more aggressive about
578 partial redundancy elimination and do more aggressive phi translation. Please
579 see the <a
580 href="http://blog.llvm.org/2009/12/advanced-topics-in-redundant-load.html">
581 Advanced Topics in Redundant Load Elimination with a Focus on PHI Translation
582 Blog Post</a> for more details.</li>
583<li>The module <a href="LangRef.html#datalayout">target data string</a> now
Wesley Peckc8459162010-04-22 13:28:34 +0000[diff] [blame]584 includes a notion of 'native' integer data types for the target. This
585 helps mid-level optimizations avoid promoting complex sequences of
586 operations to data types that are not natively supported (e.g. converting
587 i32 operations to i64 on 32-bit chips).</li>
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]588<li>The mid-level optimizer is now conservative when operating on a module with
589 no target data. Previously, it would default to SparcV9 settings, which is
590 not what most people expected.</li>
Chris Lattnera668b452010-04-21 06:42:24 +0000[diff] [blame]591<li>Jump threading is now much more aggressive at simplifying correlated
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]592 conditionals and threading blocks with otherwise complex logic. It has
593 subsumed the old "Conditional Propagation" pass, and -condprop has been
594 removed from LLVM 2.7.</li>
595<li>The -instcombine pass has been refactored from being one huge file to being
596 a library of its own. Internally, it uses a customized IRBuilder to clean
597 it up and simplify it.</li>
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]598
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]599<li>The optimal edge profiling pass is reliable and much more complete than in
600 2.6. It can be used with the llvm-prof tool but isn't wired up to the
601 llvm-gcc and clang command line options yet.</li>
Chris Lattnerd1094e02009-03-02 02:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]602
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]603<li>A new experimental alias analysis implementation, -scev-aa, has been added.
604 It uses LLVM's Scalar Evolution implementation to do symbolic analysis of
605 pointer offset expressions to disambiguate pointers. It can catch a few
606 cases that basicaa cannot, particularly in complex loop nests.</li>
Chris Lattnera668b452010-04-21 06:42:24 +0000[diff] [blame]607
Chris Lattnera67df2d2010-04-22 06:28:20 +0000[diff] [blame]608<li>The default pass ordering has been tweaked for improved optimization
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]609 effectiveness.</li>
Chris Lattnera668b452010-04-21 06:42:24 +0000[diff] [blame]610
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]611</ul>
Chris Lattnerd1094e02009-03-02 02:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]612
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]613</div>
Chris Lattnerd1094e02009-03-02 02:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]614
Chris Lattnerd1094e02009-03-02 02:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]615
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]616<!--=========================================================================-->
617<div class="doc_subsection">
618<a name="executionengine">Interpreter and JIT Improvements</a>
619</div>
Chris Lattner25879d72008-10-13 21:50:36 +0000[diff] [blame]620
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]621<div class="doc_text">
622
623<ul>
Wesley Peckba1ad202010-04-22 13:36:27 +0000[diff] [blame]624<li>The JIT now supports generating debug information and is compatible with
625the new GDB 7.0 (and later) interfaces for registering dynamically generated
626debug info.</li>
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]627
Chris Lattnera67df2d2010-04-22 06:28:20 +0000[diff] [blame]628<li>The JIT now <a href="http://llvm.org/PR5184">defaults
Jeffrey Yasskin9fb8ce82010-01-29 19:10:38 +0000[diff] [blame]629to compiling eagerly</a> to avoid a race condition in the lazy JIT.
630Clients that still want the lazy JIT can switch it on by calling
631<tt>ExecutionEngine::DisableLazyCompilation(false)</tt>.</li>
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]632
Jeffrey Yasskine0913882010-02-11 01:07:39 +0000[diff] [blame]633<li>It is now possible to create more than one JIT instance in the same process.
634These JITs can generate machine code in parallel,
635although <a href="http://llvm.org/docs/ProgrammersManual.html#jitthreading">you
636still have to obey the other threading restrictions</a>.</li>
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]637
Chris Lattner7795ea92008-06-08 02:45:07 +0000[diff] [blame]638</ul>
639
640</div>
641
642<!--=========================================================================-->
643<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattnerd434bfb2009-03-02 03:24:11 +0000[diff] [blame]644<a name="codegen">Target Independent Code Generator Improvements</a>
Chris Lattner7795ea92008-06-08 02:45:07 +0000[diff] [blame]645</div>
646
647<div class="doc_text">
648
Mikhail Glushenkov25422542009-03-01 18:09:47 +0000[diff] [blame]649<p>We have put a significant amount of work into the code generator
650infrastructure, which allows us to implement more aggressive algorithms and make
651it run faster:</p>
Chris Lattner7795ea92008-06-08 02:45:07 +0000[diff] [blame]652
653<ul>
Chris Lattnera67df2d2010-04-22 06:28:20 +0000[diff] [blame]654<li>The 'llc -asm-verbose' option (which is now the default) has been enhanced
655 to emit many useful comments to .s files indicating information about spill
656 slots and loop nest structure. This should make it much easier to read and
657 understand assembly files. This is wired up in llvm-gcc and clang to
658 the <tt>-fverbose-asm</tt> option.</li>
659
Dan Gohman00365f92010-04-22 20:50:43 +0000[diff] [blame]660<li>New LSR with "full strength reduction" mode, which can reduce address
661 register pressure in loops where address generation is important.</li>
Chris Lattnera67df2d2010-04-22 06:28:20 +0000[diff] [blame]662
663<li>A new codegen level Common Subexpression Elimination pass (MachineCSE)
664 is available and enabled by default. It catches redundancies exposed by
665 lowering.</li>
666<li>A new pre-register-allocation tail duplication pass is available and enabled
667 by default, it can substantially improve branch prediction quality in some
668 cases.</li>
669<li>A new sign and zero extension optimization pass (OptimizeExtsPass)
670 is available and enabled by default. This pass can takes advantage
671 architecture features like x86-64 implicit zero extension behavior and
672 sub-registers.</li>
673<li>The code generator now supports a mode where it attempts to preserve the
674 order of instructions in the input code. This is important for source that
675 is hand scheduled and extremely sensitive to scheduling. It is compatible
676 with the GCC <tt>-fno-schedule-insns</tt> option.</li>
677<li>The target-independent code generator now supports generating code with
678 arbitrary numbers of result values. Returning more values than was
679 previously supported is handled by returning through a hidden pointer. In
680 2.7, only the X86 and XCore targets have adopted support for this
681 though.</li>
682<li>The code generator now supports generating code that follows the
683 <a href="LangRef.html#callingconv">Glasgow Haskell Compiler Calling
684 Convention</a> and ABI.</li>
685<li>The "<a href="CodeGenerator.html#selectiondag_select">DAG instruction
686 selection</a>" phase of the code generator has been largely rewritten for
687 2.7. Previously, tblgen spit out tons of C++ code which was compiled and
688 linked into the target to do the pattern matching, now it emits a much
689 smaller table which is read by the target-independent code. The primary
690 advantages of this approach is that the size and compile time of various
691 targets is much improved. The X86 code generator shrunk by 1.5MB of code,
692 for example.</li>
693<li>Almost the entire code generator has switched to emitting code through the
694 MC interfaces instead of printing textually to the .s file. This led to a
695 number of cleanups and speedups. In 2.7, debug an exception handling
696 information does not go through MC yet.</li>
Chris Lattner0a1fd102007-09-21 03:54:09 +0000[diff] [blame]697</ul>
Chris Lattner0a1fd102007-09-21 03:54:09 +0000[diff] [blame]698</div>
699
Chris Lattnerd1094e02009-03-02 02:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]700<!--=========================================================================-->
701<div class="doc_subsection">
702<a name="x86">X86-32 and X86-64 Target Improvements</a>
703</div>
704
705<div class="doc_text">
706<p>New features of the X86 target include:
707</p>
708
709<ul>
Chris Lattnera668b452010-04-21 06:42:24 +0000[diff] [blame]710<li>The X86 backend now optimizes tails calls much more aggressively for
711 functions that use the standard C calling convention.</li>
712<li>The X86 backend now models scalar SSE registers as subregs of the SSE vector
713 registers, making the code generator more aggressive in cases where scalars
714 and vector types are mixed.</li>
Chris Lattnerd434bfb2009-03-02 03:24:11 +0000[diff] [blame]715
Chris Lattnerd1094e02009-03-02 02:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]716</ul>
717
Chris Lattnerd1094e02009-03-02 02:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]718</div>
Chris Lattner0a1fd102007-09-21 03:54:09 +0000[diff] [blame]719
720<!--=========================================================================-->
721<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]722<a name="ARM">ARM Target Improvements</a>
Chris Lattnerc92d7692009-03-01 02:30:21 +0000[diff] [blame]723</div>
724
725<div class="doc_text">
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]726<p>New features of the ARM target include:
727</p>
Chris Lattnerc92d7692009-03-01 02:30:21 +0000[diff] [blame]728
729<ul>
Chris Lattnerc92d7692009-03-01 02:30:21 +0000[diff] [blame]730
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]731<li>The ARM backend now generates instructions in unified assembly syntax.</li>
732
733<li>llvm-gcc now has complete support for the ARM v7 NEON instruction set. This
734 support differs slightly from the GCC implementation. Please see the
735 <a
736href="http://blog.llvm.org/2010/04/arm-advanced-simd-neon-intrinsics-and.html">
737 ARM Advanced SIMD (NEON) Intrinsics and Types in LLVM Blog Post</a> for
738 helpful information if migrating code from GCC to LLVM-GCC.</li>
739
Wesley Peck16144fb2010-04-22 13:43:14 +0000[diff] [blame]740<li>The ARM and Thumb code generators now use register scavenging for stack
Jim Grosbach77f0f5b2010-04-22 18:28:43 +0000[diff] [blame]741 object address materialization. This allows the use of R3 as a general
742 purpose register in Thumb1 code, as it was previous reserved for use in
743 stack address materialization. Secondly, sequential uses of the same
744 value will now re-use the materialized constant.</li>
745
Wesley Peck16144fb2010-04-22 13:43:14 +0000[diff] [blame]746<li>The ARM backend now has good support for ARMv4 targets and has been tested
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]747 on StrongARM hardware. Previously, LLVM only supported ARMv4T and
748 newer chips.</li>
Jim Grosbach96284682010-04-22 18:33:31 +0000[diff] [blame]749
750<li>Atomic builtins are now supported for ARMv6 and ARMv7 (__sync_synchronize,
751 __sync_fetch_and_add, etc.).</li>
752
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]753</ul>
Chris Lattnerc92d7692009-03-01 02:30:21 +0000[diff] [blame]754
Chris Lattnerc92d7692009-03-01 02:30:21 +0000[diff] [blame]755
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]756</div>
Chris Lattnerc92d7692009-03-01 02:30:21 +0000[diff] [blame]757
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]758<!--=========================================================================-->
759<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]760<a name="newapis">New Useful APIs</a>
761</div>
762
763<div class="doc_text">
764
765<p>This release includes a number of new APIs that are used internally, which
766 may also be useful for external clients.
767</p>
768
769<ul>
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]770<li>The optimizer uses the new CodeMetrics class to measure the size of code.
Chris Lattner77a23802010-04-22 17:39:38 +0000[diff] [blame]771 Various passes (like the inliner, loop unswitcher, etc) all use this to make
772 more accurate estimates of the code size impact of various
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]773 optimizations.</li>
774<li>A new <a href="http://llvm.org/doxygen/InstructionSimplify_8h-source.html">
Wesley Peck3edc1682010-04-22 13:50:46 +0000[diff] [blame]775 llvm/Analysis/InstructionSimplify.h</a> interface is available for doing
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]776 symbolic simplification of instructions (e.g. <tt>a+0</tt> -&gt; <tt>a</tt>)
777 without requiring the instruction to exist. This centralizes a lot of
778 ad-hoc symbolic manipulation code scattered in various passes.</li>
779<li>The optimizer now uses a new <a
780 href="http://llvm.org/doxygen/SSAUpdater_8h-source.html">SSAUpdater</a>
781 class which efficiently supports
782 doing unstructured SSA update operations. This centralized a bunch of code
Wesley Peck3edc1682010-04-22 13:50:46 +0000[diff] [blame]783 scattered throughout various passes (e.g. jump threading, lcssa,
784 loop rotate, etc) for doing this sort of thing. The code generator has a
785 similar <a href="http://llvm.org/doxygen/MachineSSAUpdater_8h-source.html">
Chris Lattner656db162010-04-22 05:41:35 +0000[diff] [blame]786 MachineSSAUpdater</a> class.</li>
787<li>The <a href="http://llvm.org/doxygen/Regex_8h-source.html">
788 llvm/Support/Regex.h</a> header exposes a platform independent regular
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]789 expression API. Building on this, the <a
790 href="TestingGuide.html#FileCheck">FileCheck</a> utility now supports
791 regular exressions.</li>
792<li>raw_ostream now supports a circular "debug stream" accessed with "dbgs()".
793 By default, this stream works the same way as "errs()", but if you pass
794 <tt>-debug-buffer-size=1000</tt> to opt, the debug stream is capped to a
795 fixed sized circular buffer and the output is printed at the end of the
796 program's execution. This is helpful if you have a long lived compiler
797 process and you're interested in seeing snapshots in time.</li>
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]798</ul>
799
800
801</div>
802
803<!--=========================================================================-->
804<div class="doc_subsection">
805<a name="otherimprovements">Other Improvements and New Features</a>
806</div>
807
808<div class="doc_text">
809<p>Other miscellaneous features include:</p>
810
811<ul>
Chris Lattner1dcca8b2010-04-21 06:23:40 +0000[diff] [blame]812<li>You can now build LLVM as a big dynamic library (e.g. "libllvm2.7.so"). To
813 get this, configure LLVM with the --enable-shared option.</li>
814
Wesley Peckcad613d2010-04-22 13:53:54 +0000[diff] [blame]815<li>LLVM command line tools now overwrite their output by default. Previously,
816 they would only do this with -f. This makes them more convenient to use, and
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]817 behave more like standard unix tools.</li>
818
819<li>The opt and llc tools now autodetect whether their input is a .ll or .bc
820 file, and automatically do the right thing. This means you don't need to
821 explicitly use the llvm-as tool for most things.</li>
Chris Lattnerc92d7692009-03-01 02:30:21 +0000[diff] [blame]822</ul>
823
824</div>
825
Chris Lattner6cb64032008-06-05 08:02:49 +0000[diff] [blame]826
827<!--=========================================================================-->
828<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattner1e4d5bc2008-10-13 17:57:36 +0000[diff] [blame]829<a name="changes">Major Changes and Removed Features</a>
830</div>
831
832<div class="doc_text">
833
Chris Lattner934e2d42008-10-13 22:06:31 +0000[diff] [blame]834<p>If you're already an LLVM user or developer with out-of-tree changes based
Jeffrey Yasskin0830b972010-01-28 01:14:43 +0000[diff] [blame]835on LLVM 2.6, this section lists some "gotchas" that you may run into upgrading
Chris Lattner934e2d42008-10-13 22:06:31 +0000[diff] [blame]836from the previous release.</p>
Chris Lattner1e4d5bc2008-10-13 17:57:36 +0000[diff] [blame]837
838<ul>
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]839
840<li>
841The Andersen's alias analysis ("anders-aa") pass, the Predicate Simplifier
842("predsimplify") pass, the LoopVR pass, the GVNPRE pass, and the random sampling
843profiling ("rsprofiling") passes have all been removed. They were not being
844actively maintained and had substantial problems. If you are interested in
845these components, you are welcome to ressurect them from SVN, fix the
846correctness problems, and resubmit them to mainline.</li>
847
848<li>LLVM now defaults to building most libraries with RTTI turned off, providing
849a code size reduction. Packagers who are interested in building LLVM to support
850plugins that require RTTI information should build with "make REQUIRE_RTTI=1"
851and should read the new <a href="Packaging.html">Advice on Packaging LLVM</a>
852document.</li>
853
Jeffrey Yasskin914050b2010-02-09 23:03:44 +0000[diff] [blame]854<li>The LLVM interpreter now defaults to <em>not</em> using <tt>libffi</tt> even
855if you have it installed. This makes it more likely that an LLVM built on one
856system will work when copied to a similar system. To use <tt>libffi</tt>,
Chris Lattnera67df2d2010-04-22 06:28:20 +0000[diff] [blame]857configure with <tt>--enable-libffi</tt>.</li>
Chris Lattner934e2d42008-10-13 22:06:31 +0000[diff] [blame]858
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]859<li>Debug information uses a completely different representation, an LLVM 2.6
860.bc file should work with LLVM 2.7, but debug info won't come forward.</li>
861
862<li>The LLVM 2.6 (and earlier) "malloc" and "free" instructions got removed,
863 along with LowerAllocations pass. Now you should just use a call to the
864 malloc and free functions in libc. These calls are optimized as well as
865 the old instructions were.</li>
866</ul>
Chris Lattner934e2d42008-10-13 22:06:31 +0000[diff] [blame]867
868<p>In addition, many APIs have changed in this release. Some of the major LLVM
869API changes are:</p>
870
871<ul>
Chris Lattner87e04952010-04-21 05:17:40 +0000[diff] [blame]872<li>Just about everything has been converted to use raw_ostream instead of
873 std::ostream.</li>
874<li>llvm/ADT/iterator.h has been removed, just use &lt;iterator&gt;
875 instead.</li>
876<li>The Streams.h file and "DOUT" got removed, use "DEBUG(errs() &lt;&lt; ...);"
877 instead.</li>
Chris Lattnercecb9232010-04-22 17:25:00 +0000[diff] [blame]878<li>The TargetAsmInfo interface was renamed to MCAsmInfo.</li>
Jeffrey Yasskin4a8b1da2010-01-28 01:41:20 +0000[diff] [blame]879<li><tt>ModuleProvider</tt> has been <a
Gabor Greif27b166352010-04-22 10:21:43 +0000[diff] [blame]880href="http://llvm.org/viewvc/llvm-project?view=rev&amp;revision=94686">removed</a>
Jeffrey Yasskin4a8b1da2010-01-28 01:41:20 +0000[diff] [blame]881and its methods moved to <tt>Module</tt> and <tt>GlobalValue</tt>.
882Most clients can remove uses of <tt>ExistingModuleProvider</tt>,
883replace <tt>getBitcodeModuleProvider</tt> with
884<tt>getLazyBitcodeModule</tt>, and pass their <tt>Module</tt> to
885functions that used to accept <tt>ModuleProvider</tt>. Clients who
886wrote their own <tt>ModuleProvider</tt>s will need to derive from
887<tt>GVMaterializer</tt> instead and use
888<tt>Module::setMaterializer</tt> to attach it to a
889<tt>Module</tt>.</li>
890
891<li><tt>GhostLinkage</tt> has given up the ghost.
892<tt>GlobalValue</tt>s that have not yet been read from their backing
893storage have the same linkage they will have after being read in.
894Clients must replace calls to
895<tt>GlobalValue::hasNotBeenReadFromBitcode</tt> with
896<tt>GlobalValue::isMaterializable</tt>.</li>
Daniel Dunbar1e96fca2010-02-10 04:09:52 +0000[diff] [blame]897
Duncan Sands80c430a2010-02-17 17:20:17 +0000[diff] [blame]898<li>The <tt>isInteger</tt>, <tt>isIntOrIntVector</tt>, <tt>isFloatingPoint</tt>,
899<tt>isFPOrFPVector</tt> and <tt>isFPOrFPVector</tt> methods have been renamed
900<tt>isIntegerTy</tt>, <tt>isIntOrIntVectorTy</tt>, <tt>isFloatingPointTy</tt>,
901<tt>isFPOrFPVectorTy</tt> and <tt>isFPOrFPVectorTy</tt> respectively.</li>
Chris Lattnercecb9232010-04-22 17:25:00 +0000[diff] [blame]902
903<li><tt>llvm::Instruction::clone()</tt> no longer takes argument.</li>
904<li><tt>raw_fd_ostream</tt>'s constructor now takes a flag argument, not individual
905 booleans (see <tt>include/llvm/Support/raw_ostream.h</tt> for details).</li>
906<li>Some header files have been renamed:
907<ul>
908 <li><tt>llvm/Support/AIXDataTypesFix.h</tt> to
909 <tt>llvm/System/AIXDataTypesFix.h</tt></li>
910 <li><tt>llvm/Support/DataTypes.h</tt> to <tt>llvm/System/DataTypes.h</tt></li>
911 <li><tt>llvm/Transforms/Utils/InlineCost.h</tt> to
912 <tt>llvm/Analysis/InlineCost.h</tt></li>
913 <li><tt>llvm/Support/Mangler.h</tt> to <tt>llvm/Target/Mangler.h</tt></li>
914 <li><tt>llvm/Analysis/Passes.h</tt> to <tt>llvm/CodeGen/Passes.h</tt></li>
915</ul></li>
Devang Pateldbf83832008-10-14 20:03:43 +0000[diff] [blame]916</ul>
Chris Lattner1e4d5bc2008-10-13 17:57:36 +0000[diff] [blame]917
Chris Lattner1e4d5bc2008-10-13 17:57:36 +0000[diff] [blame]918</div>
919
920
921
Chris Lattner62495762003-10-02 16:38:05 +0000[diff] [blame]922<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]923<div class="doc_section">
924 <a name="portability">Portability and Supported Platforms</a>
925</div>
Chris Lattner62495762003-10-02 16:38:05 +0000[diff] [blame]926<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
927
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]928<div class="doc_text">
929
John Criswell64307722004-12-08 20:35:47 +0000[diff] [blame]930<p>LLVM is known to work on the following platforms:</p>
Chris Lattner2c7b0872004-06-01 18:22:41 +0000[diff] [blame]931
932<ul>
Mikhail Glushenkov25422542009-03-01 18:09:47 +0000[diff] [blame]933<li>Intel and AMD machines (IA32, X86-64, AMD64, EMT-64) running Red Hat
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]934 Linux, Fedora Core, FreeBSD and AuroraUX (and probably other unix-like
935 systems).</li>
Chris Lattnera67df2d2010-04-22 06:28:20 +0000[diff] [blame]936<li>PowerPC and X86-based Mac OS X systems, running 10.4 and above in 32-bit
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]937 and 64-bit modes.</li>
Chris Lattnercdc44ed2008-02-06 18:00:06 +0000[diff] [blame]938<li>Intel and AMD machines running on Win32 using MinGW libraries (native).</li>
Chris Lattnerbee7b322007-05-23 04:39:32 +0000[diff] [blame]939<li>Intel and AMD machines running on Win32 with the Cygwin libraries (limited
940 support is available for native builds with Visual C++).</li>
Chris Lattner51948622009-10-16 16:30:58 +0000[diff] [blame]941<li>Sun x86 and AMD64 machines running Solaris 10, OpenSolaris 0906.</li>
John Criswelld5234922005-05-13 20:28:15 +0000[diff] [blame]942<li>Alpha-based machines running Debian GNU/Linux.</li>
Chris Lattner2c7b0872004-06-01 18:22:41 +0000[diff] [blame]943</ul>
944
Chris Lattner618a99f2008-06-05 06:57:39 +0000[diff] [blame]945<p>The core LLVM infrastructure uses GNU autoconf to adapt itself
Brian Gaekee3e557e2004-05-09 05:28:35 +0000[diff] [blame]946to the machine and operating system on which it is built. However, minor
947porting may be required to get LLVM to work on new platforms. We welcome your
948portability patches and reports of successful builds or error messages.</p>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]949
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]950</div>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]951
952<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]953<div class="doc_section">
954 <a name="knownproblems">Known Problems</a>
955</div>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]956<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
957
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]958<div class="doc_text">
959
Mikhail Glushenkov25422542009-03-01 18:09:47 +0000[diff] [blame]960<p>This section contains significant known problems with the LLVM system,
Chris Lattner2a092392008-11-10 05:40:34 +0000[diff] [blame]961listed by component. If you run into a problem, please check the <a
Chris Lattnera69595e2005-10-29 07:07:09 +0000[diff] [blame]962href="http://llvm.org/bugs/">LLVM bug database</a> and submit a bug if
Chris Lattnerb84f3322003-12-12 21:22:16 +0000[diff] [blame]963there isn't already one.</p>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]964
Chris Lattner6aba4862010-03-17 17:25:49 +0000[diff] [blame]965<ul>
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]966<li>LLVM will not correctly compile on Solaris and/or OpenSolaris
967using the stock GCC 3.x.x series 'out the box',
Chris Lattner6e41c792009-11-03 21:50:09 +0000[diff] [blame]968See: <a href="GettingStarted.html#brokengcc">Broken versions of GCC and other tools</a>.
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]969However, A <a href="http://pkg.auroraux.org/GCC">Modern GCC Build</a>
970for x86/x86-64 has been made available from the third party AuroraUX Project
971that has been meticulously tested for bootstrapping LLVM &amp; Clang.</li>
972</ul>
973
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]974</div>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]975
Chris Lattnerb911de42004-03-14 02:03:02 +0000[diff] [blame]976<!-- ======================================================================= -->
977<div class="doc_subsection">
978 <a name="experimental">Experimental features included with this release</a>
979</div>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]980
Chris Lattnerb911de42004-03-14 02:03:02 +0000[diff] [blame]981<div class="doc_text">
982
Misha Brukmanfa50a222004-05-12 21:46:05 +0000[diff] [blame]983<p>The following components of this LLVM release are either untested, known to
984be broken or unreliable, or are in early development. These components should
985not be relied on, and bugs should not be filed against them, but they may be
986useful to some people. In particular, if you would like to work on one of these
Chris Lattnere38ac152008-02-12 06:29:45 +0000[diff] [blame]987components, please contact us on the <a
988href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">LLVMdev list</a>.</p>
Chris Lattnerb911de42004-03-14 02:03:02 +0000[diff] [blame]989
990<ul>
Wesley Peck3aa84e52010-03-18 14:31:30 +0000[diff] [blame]991<li>The MSIL, Alpha, SPU, MIPS, PIC16, Blackfin, MSP430, SystemZ and MicroBlaze
992 backends are experimental.</li>
Chris Lattnera67df2d2010-04-22 06:28:20 +0000[diff] [blame]993<li><tt>llc</tt> "<tt>-filetype=asm</tt>" (the default) is the only
Chris Lattner0b1c9a52010-03-17 04:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]994 supported value for this option. The MachO writer is experimental, and
995 works much better in mainline SVN.</li>
Chris Lattnerb911de42004-03-14 02:03:02 +0000[diff] [blame]996</ul>
997
998</div>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]999
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1000<!-- ======================================================================= -->
1001<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattnerb81f10e2006-11-18 07:51:14 +0000[diff] [blame]1002 <a name="x86-be">Known problems with the X86 back-end</a>
John Criswell3bdbd302005-11-08 21:11:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1003</div>
1004
1005<div class="doc_text">
1006
1007<ul>
Anton Korobeynikov486c7d32008-06-08 10:24:13 +0000[diff] [blame]1008 <li>The X86 backend does not yet support
1009 all <a href="http://llvm.org/PR879">inline assembly that uses the X86
1010 floating point stack</a>. It supports the 'f' and 't' constraints, but not
1011 'u'.</li>
Chris Lattnerb076b002008-06-08 21:19:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1012 <li>The X86 backend generates inefficient floating point code when configured
1013 to generate code for systems that don't have SSE2.</li>
Duncan Sands0bc15262008-06-08 19:38:43 +0000[diff] [blame]1014 <li>Win64 code generation wasn't widely tested. Everything should work, but we
John Criswellea03c9d2009-03-02 15:28:15 +0000[diff] [blame]1015 expect small issues to happen. Also, llvm-gcc cannot build the mingw64
Chris Lattnera67df2d2010-04-22 06:28:20 +0000[diff] [blame]1016 runtime currently due to lack of support for the 'u' inline assembly
1017 constraint and for X87 floating point inline assembly.</li>
Dan Gohman721b3722008-06-08 23:05:11 +0000[diff] [blame]1018 <li>The X86-64 backend does not yet support the LLVM IR instruction
Chris Lattnera67df2d2010-04-22 06:28:20 +0000[diff] [blame]1019 <tt>va_arg</tt>. Currently, front-ends support variadic
Dan Gohman721b3722008-06-08 23:05:11 +0000[diff] [blame]1020 argument constructs on X86-64 by lowering them manually.</li>
Chris Lattnerb81f10e2006-11-18 07:51:14 +0000[diff] [blame]1021</ul>
1022
1023</div>
1024
1025<!-- ======================================================================= -->
1026<div class="doc_subsection">
1027 <a name="ppc-be">Known problems with the PowerPC back-end</a>
1028</div>
1029
1030<div class="doc_text">
1031
1032<ul>
Nicolas Geoffray77d99502007-05-15 09:21:28 +0000[diff] [blame]1033<li>The Linux PPC32/ABI support needs testing for the interpreter and static
Chris Lattnerbee7b322007-05-23 04:39:32 +0000[diff] [blame]1034compilation, and lacks support for debug information.</li>
Chris Lattnerb81f10e2006-11-18 07:51:14 +0000[diff] [blame]1035</ul>
1036
1037</div>
1038
1039<!-- ======================================================================= -->
1040<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattner97beb512007-05-14 06:56:09 +0000[diff] [blame]1041 <a name="arm-be">Known problems with the ARM back-end</a>
1042</div>
1043
1044<div class="doc_text">
1045
1046<ul>
Chris Lattnerbee7b322007-05-23 04:39:32 +0000[diff] [blame]1047<li>Thumb mode works only on ARMv6 or higher processors. On sub-ARMv6
Duncan Sands47fc0a22007-09-26 15:59:54 +0000[diff] [blame]1048processors, thumb programs can crash or produce wrong
Chris Lattnerbee7b322007-05-23 04:39:32 +0000[diff] [blame]1049results (<a href="http://llvm.org/PR1388">PR1388</a>).</li>
John Criswellea03c9d2009-03-02 15:28:15 +0000[diff] [blame]1050<li>Compilation for ARM Linux OABI (old ABI) is supported but not fully tested.
Chris Lattner97beb512007-05-14 06:56:09 +0000[diff] [blame]1051</li>
Chris Lattner97beb512007-05-14 06:56:09 +0000[diff] [blame]1052</ul>
1053
1054</div>
1055
1056<!-- ======================================================================= -->
1057<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattnerb81f10e2006-11-18 07:51:14 +0000[diff] [blame]1058 <a name="sparc-be">Known problems with the SPARC back-end</a>
1059</div>
1060
1061<div class="doc_text">
1062
1063<ul>
John Criswellea03c9d2009-03-02 15:28:15 +0000[diff] [blame]1064<li>The SPARC backend only supports the 32-bit SPARC ABI (-m32); it does not
Chris Lattnerb81f10e2006-11-18 07:51:14 +0000[diff] [blame]1065 support the 64-bit SPARC ABI (-m64).</li>
1066</ul>
1067
1068</div>
1069
1070<!-- ======================================================================= -->
1071<div class="doc_subsection">
Bruno Cardoso Lopes24eb3de2008-10-25 14:56:26 +0000[diff] [blame]1072 <a name="mips-be">Known problems with the MIPS back-end</a>
1073</div>
1074
1075<div class="doc_text">
1076
1077<ul>
Bruno Cardoso Lopes24eb3de2008-10-25 14:56:26 +0000[diff] [blame]1078<li>64-bit MIPS targets are not supported yet.</li>
1079</ul>
1080
1081</div>
1082
1083<!-- ======================================================================= -->
1084<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattnerb81f10e2006-11-18 07:51:14 +0000[diff] [blame]1085 <a name="alpha-be">Known problems with the Alpha back-end</a>
1086</div>
1087
1088<div class="doc_text">
1089
1090<ul>
1091
1092<li>On 21164s, some rare FP arithmetic sequences which may trap do not have the
1093appropriate nops inserted to ensure restartability.</li>
1094
John Criswell3bdbd302005-11-08 21:11:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1095</ul>
1096</div>
1097
Chris Lattnerb81f10e2006-11-18 07:51:14 +0000[diff] [blame]1098<!-- ======================================================================= -->
1099<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattner97beb512007-05-14 06:56:09 +0000[diff] [blame]1100 <a name="c-be">Known problems with the C back-end</a>
Chris Lattnerb81f10e2006-11-18 07:51:14 +0000[diff] [blame]1101</div>
1102
1103<div class="doc_text">
1104
1105<ul>
Chris Lattnera1a4c9a2008-06-05 06:35:40 +0000[diff] [blame]1106<li><a href="http://llvm.org/PR802">The C backend has only basic support for
1107 inline assembly code</a>.</li>
Chris Lattner8e061162007-09-26 06:01:35 +0000[diff] [blame]1108<li><a href="http://llvm.org/PR1658">The C backend violates the ABI of common
1109 C++ programs</a>, preventing intermixing between C++ compiled by the CBE and
Gabor Greif75b2f762009-03-02 12:02:51 +0000[diff] [blame]1110 C++ code compiled with <tt>llc</tt> or native compilers.</li>
Duncan Sandse09506a2008-02-10 13:40:55 +0000[diff] [blame]1111<li>The C backend does not support all exception handling constructs.</li>
Duncan Sands3aa36732009-02-25 11:51:54 +0000[diff] [blame]1112<li>The C backend does not support arbitrary precision integers.</li>
Chris Lattnerb81f10e2006-11-18 07:51:14 +0000[diff] [blame]1113</ul>
1114
1115</div>
John Criswell3bdbd302005-11-08 21:11:33 +0000[diff] [blame]1116
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1117
1118<!-- ======================================================================= -->
1119<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattner0b1c9a52010-03-17 04:41:49 +0000[diff] [blame]1120 <a name="c-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc C and C++ front-end</a>
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1121</div>
Chris Lattner178f3db2003-10-02 05:07:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1122
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1123<div class="doc_text">
Chris Lattner72a269f2006-03-03 00:34:26 +0000[diff] [blame]1124
Chris Lattnera1a4c9a2008-06-05 06:35:40 +0000[diff] [blame]1125<p>The only major language feature of GCC not supported by llvm-gcc is
1126 the <tt>__builtin_apply</tt> family of builtins. However, some extensions
1127 are only supported on some targets. For example, trampolines are only
Duncan Sands56448462008-06-08 20:18:35 +0000[diff] [blame]1128 supported on some targets (these are used when you take the address of a
1129 nested function).</p>
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1130
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1131</div>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]1132
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1133<!-- ======================================================================= -->
1134<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattner7292fb12008-10-30 03:58:13 +0000[diff] [blame]1135 <a name="fortran-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc Fortran front-end</a>
1136</div>
1137
1138<div class="doc_text">
Gabor Greife5f9d672008-11-04 21:50:59 +0000[diff] [blame]1139<ul>
Chris Lattner7292fb12008-10-30 03:58:13 +0000[diff] [blame]1140<li>Fortran support generally works, but there are still several unresolved bugs
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1141 in <a href="http://llvm.org/bugs/">Bugzilla</a>. Please see the
1142 tools/gfortran component for details.</li>
Gabor Greife5f9d672008-11-04 21:50:59 +0000[diff] [blame]1143</ul>
Chris Lattner7292fb12008-10-30 03:58:13 +0000[diff] [blame]1144</div>
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1145
Chris Lattnere38ac152008-02-12 06:29:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1146<!-- ======================================================================= -->
1147<div class="doc_subsection">
Chris Lattnera1a4c9a2008-06-05 06:35:40 +0000[diff] [blame]1148 <a name="ada-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc Ada front-end</a>
Chris Lattnere38ac152008-02-12 06:29:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1149</div>
1150
1151<div class="doc_text">
John Criswellea03c9d2009-03-02 15:28:15 +0000[diff] [blame]1152The llvm-gcc 4.2 Ada compiler works fairly well; however, this is not a mature
1153technology, and problems should be expected.
Chris Lattnere38ac152008-02-12 06:29:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1154<ul>
Duncan Sands56448462008-06-08 20:18:35 +0000[diff] [blame]1155<li>The Ada front-end currently only builds on X86-32. This is mainly due
John Criswellea03c9d2009-03-02 15:28:15 +0000[diff] [blame]1156to lack of trampoline support (pointers to nested functions) on other platforms.
1157However, it <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2006">also fails to build on X86-64</a>
Chris Lattnere38ac152008-02-12 06:29:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1158which does support trampolines.</li>
1159<li>The Ada front-end <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2007">fails to bootstrap</a>.
Duncan Sandsd34bf762009-02-25 11:59:06 +0000[diff] [blame]1160This is due to lack of LLVM support for <tt>setjmp</tt>/<tt>longjmp</tt> style
1161exception handling, which is used internally by the compiler.
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1162Workaround: configure with <tt>--disable-bootstrap</tt>.</li>
Duncan Sandsaef747f2008-10-13 17:27:23 +0000[diff] [blame]1163<li>The c380004, <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2010">c393010</a>
1164and <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2421">cxg2021</a> ACATS tests fail
Duncan Sandsd34bf762009-02-25 11:59:06 +0000[diff] [blame]1165(c380004 also fails with gcc-4.2 mainline).
1166If the compiler is built with checks disabled then <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2010">c393010</a>
1167causes the compiler to go into an infinite loop, using up all system memory.</li>
Duncan Sands2dbb00e2009-03-02 16:35:57 +0000[diff] [blame]1168<li>Some GCC specific Ada tests continue to crash the compiler.</li>
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1169<li>The <tt>-E</tt> binder option (exception backtraces)
Chris Lattnere38ac152008-02-12 06:29:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1170<a href="http://llvm.org/PR1982">does not work</a> and will result in programs
Chris Lattneraa61f412009-10-13 17:48:04 +0000[diff] [blame]1171crashing if an exception is raised. Workaround: do not use <tt>-E</tt>.</li>
Chris Lattnere38ac152008-02-12 06:29:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1172<li>Only discrete types <a href="http://llvm.org/PR1981">are allowed to start
1173or finish at a non-byte offset</a> in a record. Workaround: do not pack records
1174or use representation clauses that result in a field of a non-discrete type
1175starting or finishing in the middle of a byte.</li>
Chris Lattnerb076b002008-06-08 21:19:07 +0000[diff] [blame]1176<li>The <tt>lli</tt> interpreter <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2009">considers
1177'main' as generated by the Ada binder to be invalid</a>.
1178Workaround: hand edit the file to use pointers for <tt>argv</tt> and
1179<tt>envp</tt> rather than integers.</li>
1180<li>The <tt>-fstack-check</tt> option <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2008">is
1181ignored</a>.</li>
Chris Lattnere38ac152008-02-12 06:29:45 +0000[diff] [blame]1182</ul>
1183</div>
1184
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]1185<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1186<div class="doc_section">
1187 <a name="additionalinfo">Additional Information</a>
1188</div>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]1189<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
1190
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1191<div class="doc_text">
1192
Chris Lattnercb5596d2005-05-16 17:13:10 +0000[diff] [blame]1193<p>A wide variety of additional information is available on the <a
Chris Lattnere0c1df42007-05-18 00:44:29 +0000[diff] [blame]1194href="http://llvm.org">LLVM web page</a>, in particular in the <a
1195href="http://llvm.org/docs/">documentation</a> section. The web page also
Reid Spencerc7f87f22007-07-09 08:04:31 +0000[diff] [blame]1196contains versions of the API documentation which is up-to-date with the
1197Subversion version of the source code.
Misha Brukman96158092005-03-30 19:14:24 +0000[diff] [blame]1198You can access versions of these documents specific to this release by going
1199into the "<tt>llvm/doc/</tt>" directory in the LLVM tree.</p>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]1200
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1201<p>If you have any questions or comments about LLVM, please feel free to contact
Chris Lattnera69595e2005-10-29 07:07:09 +0000[diff] [blame]1202us via the <a href="http://llvm.org/docs/#maillist"> mailing
Chris Lattnerb84f3322003-12-12 21:22:16 +0000[diff] [blame]1203lists</a>.</p>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]1204
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1205</div>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]1206
1207<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]1208
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1209<hr>
Misha Brukman68aab3b2003-11-22 01:23:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1210<address>
Misha Brukman8834af92003-12-21 22:53:21 +0000[diff] [blame]1211 <a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer"><img
Misha Brukman86242e12008-12-11 17:34:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1212 src="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/images/vcss-blue" alt="Valid CSS"></a>
Misha Brukman68aab3b2003-11-22 01:23:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1213 <a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer"><img
Misha Brukman86242e12008-12-11 17:34:48 +0000[diff] [blame]1214 src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-html401-blue" alt="Valid HTML 4.01"></a>
Misha Brukman68aab3b2003-11-22 01:23:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1215
Chris Lattnere0c1df42007-05-18 00:44:29 +0000[diff] [blame]1216 <a href="http://llvm.org/">LLVM Compiler Infrastructure</a><br>
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1217 Last modified: $Date$
Misha Brukman68aab3b2003-11-22 01:23:39 +0000[diff] [blame]1218</address>
Chris Lattner3d482502003-10-02 04:57:28 +0000[diff] [blame]1219
Misha Brukman80731b92003-11-22 00:38:41 +0000[diff] [blame]1220</body>
1221</html>