Book Image

Learn LLVM 12

By : Kai Nacke
Book Image

Learn LLVM 12

By: Kai Nacke

Overview of this book

LLVM was built to bridge the gap between compiler textbooks and actual compiler development. It provides a modular codebase and advanced tools which help developers to build compilers easily. This book provides a practical introduction to LLVM, gradually helping you navigate through complex scenarios with ease when it comes to building and working with compilers. You’ll start by configuring, building, and installing LLVM libraries, tools, and external projects. Next, the book will introduce you to LLVM design and how it works in practice during each LLVM compiler stage: frontend, optimizer, and backend. Using a subset of a real programming language as an example, you will then learn how to develop a frontend and generate LLVM IR, hand it over to the optimization pipeline, and generate machine code from it. Later chapters will show you how to extend LLVM with a new pass and how instruction selection in LLVM works. You’ll also focus on Just-in-Time compilation issues and the current state of JIT-compilation support that LLVM provides, before finally going on to understand how to develop a new backend for LLVM. By the end of this LLVM book, you will have gained real-world experience in working with the LLVM compiler development framework with the help of hands-on examples and source code snippets.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1 – The Basics of Compiler Construction with LLVM
5
Section 2 – From Source to Machine Code Generation
11
Section 3 –Taking LLVM to the Next Level

Extending the ELF file format definition in LLVM

The ELF file format is one of the binary object file formats that LLVM has support for to read and write. ELF itself is defined for many CPU architectures, and there is also a definition for the M88k architecture. All we need to do is to add the definition of the relocations and some flags. The relocations are given in Chapter 4, Object Files, of the System V ABI M88k Processor supplement book:

  1. We need to type the following into the llvm/include/llvm/BinaryFormat/ELFRelocs/M88k.def file:
    #ifndef ELF_RELOC
    #error "ELF_RELOC must be defined"
    #endif
    ELF_RELOC(R_88K_NONE, 0)
    ELF_RELOC(R_88K_COPY, 1)
    // Many more…
  2. We also add some flags to the llvm/include/llvm/BinaryFormat/ELF.h file and include the relocation definitions:
    // M88k Specific e_flags
    enum : unsigned {
      EF_88K_NABI = 0x80000000,   // Not ABI compliant
      EF_88K_M88110 = 0x00000004  // File uses 88110-
    &...