Book Image

Learn LLVM 17 - Second Edition

By : Kai Nacke, Amy Kwan
Book Image

Learn LLVM 17 - Second Edition

By: Kai Nacke, Amy Kwan

Overview of this book

LLVM was built to bridge the gap between the theoretical knowledge found in compiler textbooks and the practical demands of compiler development. With a modular codebase and advanced tools, LLVM empowers developers to build compilers with ease. This book serves as a practical introduction to LLVM, guiding you progressively through complex scenarios and ensuring that you navigate the challenges of building and working with compilers like a pro. The book starts by showing you how to configure, build, and install LLVM libraries, tools, and external projects. You’ll then be introduced to LLVM's design, unraveling its applications in each compiler stage: frontend, optimizer, and backend. Using a real programming language subset, you'll build a frontend, generate LLVM IR, optimize it through the pipeline, and generate machine code. Advanced chapters extend your expertise, covering topics such as extending LLVM with a new pass, using LLVM tools for debugging, and enhancing the quality of your code. You'll also focus on just-in-time compilation issues and the current state of JIT-compilation support with LLVM. Finally, you’ll develop a new backend for LLVM, gaining insights into target description and how instruction selection works. By the end of this book, you'll have hands-on experience with the LLVM compiler development framework through real-world examples and source code snippets.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Part 1: The Basics of Compiler Construction with LLVM
4
Part 2: From Source to Machine Code Generation
10
Part 3: Taking LLVM to the Next Level
14
Part 4: Roll Your Own Backend

Creating the project layout

The project layout for tinylang follows the approach we laid out in Chapter 1, Installing LLVM. The source code for each component is in a subdirectory of the lib directory, and the header files are in a subdirectory of include/tinylang. The subdirectory is named after the component. In Chapter 1, Installing LLVM, we only created the Basic component.

From the previous chapter, we know that we need to implement a lexer, a parser, an AST, and a semantic analyzer. Each is a component of its own, called Lexer, Parser, AST, and Sema, respectively. The directory layout that will be used in this chapter looks like this:

Figure 3.1 – The directory layout of the tinylang project

Figure 3.1 – The directory layout of the tinylang project

The components have clearly defined dependencies. Lexer depends only on Basic. Parser depends on Basic, Lexer, AST, and Sema. Sema only depends on Basic and AST. The well-defined dependencies help us reuse the components.

Let’s have a closer...