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

Working with arrays, structs, and pointers

For almost all applications, basic types such as INTEGER are not sufficient. For example, to represent mathematical objects such as a matrix or a complex number, you must construct new data types based on existing ones. These new data types are generally known as aggregate or composite.

Arrays are a sequence of elements of the same type. In LLVM, arrays are always static, which means that the number of elements is constant. The tinylang type ARRAY [10] OF INTEGER or the C type long[10] is expressed in IR as follows:

[10 x i64]

Structures are composites of different types. In programming languages, they are often expressed with named members. For example, in tinylang, a structure is written as RECORD x: REAL; color: INTEGER; y: REAL; END; and the same structure in C is struct { float x; long color; float y; };. In LLVM IR, only the type names are listed:

{ float, i64, float }

To access a member, a numerical index is used. Like...