This document describes the LLVM bitcode file format. It specifies the binary encoding rules of the bitcode file format so that equivalent systems can encode bitcode files correctly. The LLVM bitcode representation is used to store the intermediate representation on disk in a compacted form.

This document supercedes the LLVM bytecode file format for the 2.0 release.

This section describes the general concepts of the bitcode file format without getting into specific layout details. It is recommended that you read this section thoroughly before interpreting the detailed descriptions.