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Chris Lattner a54c1f70b8 final hacking for tonight, still more to go. 
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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="llvm.css" type="text/css">
<title>LLVM 2.7 Release Notes</title>
</head>
<body>
<div class="doc_title">LLVM 2.7 Release Notes</div>
<img align=right src="http://llvm.org/img/DragonSmall.png"
width="136" height="136">
<ol>
<li><a href="#intro">Introduction</a></li>
<li><a href="#subproj">Sub-project Status Update</a></li>
<li><a href="#externalproj">External Projects Using LLVM 2.7</a></li>
<li><a href="#whatsnew">What's New in LLVM 2.7?</a></li>
<li><a href="GettingStarted.html">Installation Instructions</a></li>
<li><a href="#portability">Portability and Supported Platforms</a></li>
<li><a href="#knownproblems">Known Problems</a></li>
<li><a href="#additionalinfo">Additional Information</a></li>
</ol>
<div class="doc_author">
<p>Written by the <a href="http://llvm.org">LLVM Team</a></p>
</div>
<!--
<h1 style="color:red">These are in-progress notes for the upcoming LLVM 2.7
release.<br>
You may prefer the
<a href="http://llvm.org/releases/2.6/docs/ReleaseNotes.html">LLVM 2.6
Release Notes</a>.</h1>-->
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="intro">Introduction</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This document contains the release notes for the LLVM Compiler
Infrastructure, release 2.7. Here we describe the status of LLVM, including
major improvements from the previous release and significant known problems.
All LLVM releases may be downloaded from the <a
href="http://llvm.org/releases/">LLVM releases web site</a>.</p>
<p>For more information about LLVM, including information about the latest
release, please check out the <a href="http://llvm.org/">main LLVM
web site</a>. If you have questions or comments, the <a
href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">LLVM Developer's
Mailing List</a> is a good place to send them.</p>
<p>Note that if you are reading this file from a Subversion checkout or the
main LLVM web page, this document applies to the <i>next</i> release, not the
current one. To see the release notes for a specific release, please see the
<a href="http://llvm.org/releases/">releases page</a>.</p>
</div>
<!--
Almost dead code.
include/llvm/Analysis/LiveValues.h => Dan
lib/Transforms/IPO/MergeFunctions.cpp => consider for 2.8.
llvm/Analysis/PointerTracking.h => Edwin wants this, consider for 2.8.
ABCD, GEPSplitterPass
MSIL backend?
lib/Transforms/Utils/SSI.cpp -> ABCD depends on it.
-->
<!-- Features that need text if they're finished for 2.7:
strong phi elim
llvm.dbg.value: variable debug info for optimized code
loop dependence analysis
-->
<!-- for announcement email:
Logo web page.
llvm devmtg
compiler_rt
KLEE web page at klee.llvm.org
Many new papers added to /pubs/
Mention gcc plugin.
-->
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="subproj">Sub-project Status Update</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
The LLVM 2.7 distribution currently consists of code from the core LLVM
repository (which roughly includes the LLVM optimizers, code generators
and supporting tools), the Clang repository and the llvm-gcc repository. In
addition to this code, the LLVM Project includes other sub-projects that are in
development. Here we include updates on these subprojects.
</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="clang">Clang: C/C++/Objective-C Frontend Toolkit</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/">Clang project</a> is ...</p>
<p>In the LLVM 2.7 time-frame, the Clang team has made many improvements:</p>
<ul>
<li>FIXME: C++! Include a link to cxx_compatibility.html</li>
<li>FIXME: Static Analyzer improvements?</li>
<li>CIndex API and Python bindings: Clang now includes a C API as part of the
CIndex library. Although we make make some changes to the API in the future, it
is intended to be stable and has been designed for use by external projects. See
the Clang
doxygen <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/doxygen/group__CINDEX.html">CIndex</a>
documentation for more details. The CIndex API also includings an preliminary
set of Python bindings.</li>
<li>ARM Support: Clang now has ABI support for both the Darwin and Linux ARM
ABIs. Coupled with many improvements to the LLVM ARM backend, Clang is now
suitable for use as a a beta quality ARM compiler.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="clangsa">Clang Static Analyzer</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Previously announced in the 2.4, 2.5, and 2.6 LLVM releases, the Clang project also
includes an early stage static source code analysis tool for <a
href="http://clang.llvm.org/StaticAnalysis.html">automatically finding bugs</a>
in C and Objective-C programs. The tool performs checks to find
bugs that occur on a specific path within a program.</p>
<p>In the LLVM 2.7 time-frame, the analyzer core has sprouted legs and...</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="vmkit">VMKit: JVM/CLI Virtual Machine Implementation</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
The <a href="http://vmkit.llvm.org/">VMKit project</a> is an implementation of
a JVM and a CLI Virtual Machine (Microsoft .NET is an
implementation of the CLI) using LLVM for static and just-in-time
compilation.</p>
<p>
With the release of LLVM 2.7, VMKit has shifted to a great framework for writing
virtual machines. VMKit now offers precise and efficient garbage collection with
multi-threading support, thanks to the MMTk memory management toolkit, as well
as just in time and ahead of time compilation with LLVM. The major changes in
VMKit 0.27 are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Garbage collection: VMKit now uses the MMTk toolkit for garbage collectors.
The first collector to be ported is the MarkSweep collector, which is precise,
and drastically improves the performance of VMKit.</li>
<li>Line number information in the JVM: by using the debug metadata of LLVM, the
JVM now supports precise line number information, useful when printing a stack
trace.</li>
<li>Interface calls in the JVM: we implemented a variant of the Interface Method
Table technique for interface calls in the JVM.
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="compiler-rt">compiler-rt: Compiler Runtime Library</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
The new LLVM <a href="http://compiler-rt.llvm.org/">compiler-rt project</a>
is a simple library that provides an implementation of the low-level
target-specific hooks required by code generation and other runtime components.
For example, when compiling for a 32-bit target, converting a double to a 64-bit
unsigned integer is compiled into a runtime call to the "__fixunsdfdi"
function. The compiler-rt library provides highly optimized implementations of
this and other low-level routines (some are 3x faster than the equivalent
libgcc routines).</p>
<p>
All of the code in the compiler-rt project is available under the standard LLVM
License, a "BSD-style" license. New in LLVM 2.7: compiler_rt now
supports ARM targets.</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="dragonegg">DragonEgg: llvm-gcc ported to gcc-4.5</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
<a href="http://dragonegg.llvm.org/">DragonEgg</a> is a port of llvm-gcc to
gcc-4.5. Unlike llvm-gcc, which makes many intrusive changes to the underlying
gcc-4.2 code, dragonegg in theory does not require any gcc-4.5 modifications
whatsoever (currently one small patch is needed). This is thanks to the new
<a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/plugins">gcc plugin architecture</a>, which
makes it possible to modify the behaviour of gcc at runtime by loading a plugin,
which is nothing more than a dynamic library which conforms to the gcc plugin
interface. DragonEgg is a gcc plugin that causes the LLVM optimizers to be run
instead of the gcc optimizers, and the LLVM code generators instead of the gcc
code generators, just like llvm-gcc. To use it, you add
"-fplugin=path/dragonegg.so" to the gcc-4.5 command line, and gcc-4.5 magically
becomes llvm-gcc-4.5!
</p>
<p>
DragonEgg is still a work in progress. Currently C works very well, while C++,
Ada and Fortran work fairly well. All other languages either don't work at all,
or only work poorly. For the moment only the x86-32 and x86-64 targets are
supported, and only on linux and darwin (darwin needs an additional gcc patch).
</p>
<p>
The first dragonegg release will occur shortly after llvm-2.7 is released.
</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="mc">llvm-mc: Machine Code Toolkit</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
The LLVM Machine Code (MC) Toolkit project is ...
</p>
<p>
MC Disassembler (with blog post), MCInstPrinter. Many X86 backend and AsmPrinter simplifications
Can transcode from GAS to intel syntax with "llvm-mc foo.s -output-asm-variant=1"
</p>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="externalproj">External Open Source Projects Using LLVM 2.7</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>An exciting aspect of LLVM is that it is used as an enabling technology for
a lot of other language and tools projects. This section lists some of the
projects that have already been updated to work with LLVM 2.7.</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="pure">Pure</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
<a href="http://pure-lang.googlecode.com/">Pure</a>
is an algebraic/functional programming language based on term rewriting.
Programs are collections of equations which are used to evaluate expressions in
a symbolic fashion. Pure offers dynamic typing, eager and lazy evaluation,
lexical closures, a hygienic macro system (also based on term rewriting),
built-in list and matrix support (including list and matrix comprehensions) and
an easy-to-use C interface. The interpreter uses LLVM as a backend to
JIT-compile Pure programs to fast native code.</p>
<p>Pure versions 0.43 and later have been tested and are known to work with
LLVM 2.7 (and continue to work with older LLVM releases >= 2.5).</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="RoadsendPHP">Roadsend PHP</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
<a href="http://code.roadsend.com/rphp">Roadsend PHP</a> (rphp) is an open
source implementation of the PHP programming
language that uses LLVM for its optimizer, JIT and static compiler. This is a
reimplementation of an earlier project that is now based on LLVM.
</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="UnladenSwallow">Unladen Swallow</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
<a href="http://code.google.com/p/unladen-swallow/">Unladen Swallow</a> is a
branch of <a href="http://python.org/">Python</a> intended to be fully
compatible and significantly faster. It uses LLVM's optimization passes and JIT
compiler.
</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="tce">TTA-based Codesign Environment (TCE)</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
<a href="http://tce.cs.tut.fi/">TCE</a> is a toolset for designing
application-specific processors (ASP) based on the Transport triggered
architecture (TTA). The toolset provides a complete co-design flow from C/C++
programs down to synthesizable VHDL and parallel program binaries. Processor
customization points include the register files, function units, supported
operations, and the interconnection network.</p>
<p>TCE uses llvm-gcc/Clang and LLVM for C/C++ language support, target
independent optimizations and also for parts of code generation. It generates
new LLVM-based code generators "on the fly" for the designed TTA processors and
loads them in to the compiler backend as runtime libraries to avoid per-target
recompilation of larger parts of the compiler chain.</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="safecode">SAFECode Compiler</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
<a href="http://safecode.cs.illinois.edu">SAFECode</a> is a memory safe C
compiler built using LLVM. It takes standard, unannotated C code, analyzes the
code to ensure that memory accesses and array indexing operations are safe, and
instruments the code with run-time checks when safety cannot be proven
statically.
</p>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="whatsnew">What's New in LLVM 2.7?</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This release includes a huge number of bug fixes, performance tweaks and
minor improvements. Some of the major improvements and new features are listed
in this section.
</p>
<p>In addition to changes to the code, between LLVM 2.6 and 2.7, a number of
organization changes have happened:
</p>
<ul>
<li>LLVM has a new <a href="http://llvm.org/Logo.html">official Logo</a>!</li>
<li>Ted Kremenek and Doug Gregor have stepped forward as <a
href="http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#owners">Code Owners</a> of the
Clang static analyzer and the Clang Frontend, respectively.</li>
<li>LLVM now has an <a href="http://blog.llvm.org">official Blog</a> at
<a href="http://blog.llvm.org">http://blog.llvm.org</a>. This is a great way
to learn about new LLVM-related features as they are implemented. Several
features in this release are already explained on the blog.</li>
<li>The LLVM web pages are now checked into the SVN server, in the "www",
"www-pubs" and "www-releases" SVN modules. Previously they were hidden in a
largely inaccessible old CVS server.</p>
<li><a href="http://llvm.org">llvm.org</a> is now hosted on a new (and much
faster) server. It is still graciously hosted at the University of Illinois
of Urbana Champaign.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="majorfeatures">Major New Features</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>LLVM 2.7 includes several major new capabilities:</p>
<ul>
<li>This release includes initial support for the <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroBlaze">MicroBlaze</a> target.
MicroBlaze is a soft processor core designed for Xilinx FPGAs.</li>
<li>LLVM 2.7 includes a new LLVM IR "extensible metadata" feature. This feature
supports many different use cases, including allowing front-end authors to
encode source level information into LLVM IR, which is consumed by later
language-specific passes. This is a great way to do high-level optimizations
like devirtualization, type-based alias analysis, etc. See the <a
href="http://blog.llvm.org/2010/04/extensible-metadata-in-llvm-ir.html">
Extensible Metadata Blog Post</a> for more information.</li>
<li>LLVM 2.7 encodes <a href="SourceLevelDebugging.html">debug information</a>
in a completely new way, built on extensible metadata. The new implementation
is much more memory efficient and paves the way for improvements to optimized
code debugging experience.</li>
<li>LLVM 2.7 now directly supports taking the address of a label and doing an
indirect branch through a pointer. This is particularly useful for
interpreter loops, and is used to implement the GCC "address of label"
extension. For more information, see the <a
href="http://blog.llvm.org/2010/01/address-of-label-and-indirect-branches.html">
Address of Label and Indirect Branches in LLVM IR Blog Post</a>.
<li>LLVM 2.7 is the first release to start supporting APIs for assembling and
disassembling target machine code. These APIs are useful for a variety of
low level clients, and are surfaced in the new "enhanced disassembly" API.
For more information see the <a
href="http://blog.llvm.org/2010/01/x86-disassembler.html">The X86
Disassembler Blog Post</a> for more information.</li>
<li>LLVM 2.7 includes major parts of the work required by the new MC Project,
which aims to rework our handling of low-level machine code. A few targets
have been refactored to support it, and work is underway to support a native
assembler in LLVM. This work is not complete in LLVM 2.7, but you has made
substantially more progress on LLVM mainline. You can read more about this
in the <a href="http://blog.llvm.org/2010/04/intro-to-llvm-mc-project.html">
Intro to the LLVM MC Project Blog Post</a>.
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="coreimprovements">LLVM IR and Core Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>LLVM IR has several new features for better support of new targets and that
expose new optimization opportunities:</p>
<ul>
<li>LLVM IR now supports a 16-bit "half float" data type through two new <a
href="LangRef.html#int_fp16">intrinsics</a> and APFloat support.</li>
<li>LLVM IR supports two <a href="LangRef.html#fnattrs">new function
attributes</a>: inlinehint and alignstack(n). The former is a hint to the
optimizer that a function was declared 'inline' and thus it might be useful
to increase the chances the the inliner actually inline it. The later
indicates to the code generator that the function diverges from the platform
ABI on stack alignment.</li>
<li>The new <a href="LangRef.html#int_objectsize">llvm.objectsize</a> intrinsic
allows the optimizer to infer the sizes of memory objects in some cases.
This intrinsic is used to implement the GCC __builtin_object_size
extension.</li>
<li>LLVM 2.7 has pre-alpha support for <a
href="http://llvm.org/docs/LangRef.html#t_union">unions in LLVM IR</a>.
Unfortuantely, this support is not really usable in 2.7, so if you're
interested in pushing it forward, please help contribute to LLVM mainline.</li>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="optimizer">Optimizer Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>In addition to a large array of minor performance tweaks and bug fixes, this
release includes a few major enhancements and additions to the optimizers:</p>
<ul>
<li>Inliner reuses arrays allocas when inlining multiple callers to reduce stack usage.</li>
<li>Instcombine is now a library, has its own IRBuilder to simplify itself.</li>
<li>Better code size analysis in loop unswitch, inliner code split out to a new
CodeMetrics class for reuse.</li>
<li>Many changes to the pass ordering for improved optimization
effectiveness.</li>
<li>BasicAA improved to be less dependent on "type safe" pointers, it can now look
through bitcasts more aggressively.</li>
<li>GVN PHI Translation improvements. blog post: http://blog.llvm.org/2009/12/advanced-topics-in-redundant-load.html</li>
<li>New SCEV AA pass: -scev-aa</li>
<li>Target data now has notion of 'native' integer data types which optimizations can use.</li>
<li>Opt now works conservatively if no target data is set (is this fully working?)</li>
<li>New Analysis/InstructionSimplify.h interface for simplifying instructions that don't exist.</li>
<li>Jump threading is now much more aggressive at simplifying correlated
conditionals and threading blocks with otherwise complex logic. CondProp pass
removed (functionality merged into jump threading).</li>
<li>New SSAUpdater and MachineSSAUpdater classes for unstructured ssa updating,
changed jump threading, GVN, etc to use it which simplified them and speed
them up.</li>
<li>
The Optimal Edge Profiling implementation in 2.6 was more a proof of
concept. The current implementation (the one that will go into 2.7) is
now stable and (as far as my tests go) bug free.
The profiling with instrumentation via "opt" and analysis via the tool
"llvm-prof" should Work As Expected (TM).
Two things are missing:
*) Still missing is the modification of all -std-compile-opt passes to
update the profiling information according to the changes made to the
CFG, I'm planning to do this after my master thesis is finished. This
will enable all passes to use the ProfileInfo if available and base
decisions on that information.
*) GCC has the options "-pg", "-fprofile-arcs" and "--coverage" that
insert profiling code and "-fprofile-use" to use them the next time
during compilation. I guess this options should also work properly in
llvm-gcc and clang?</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="executionengine">Interpreter and JIT Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>The JIT now supports generating debug information, which is compatible with
the new GDB 7.0 (and later) interfaces for registering debug info for
dynamically generated code.</li>
<li>The JIT now <a
href="http://llvm.org/viewvc/llvm-project?view=rev&revision=85295">defaults
to compiling eagerly</a> to avoid a race condition in the lazy JIT.
Clients that still want the lazy JIT can switch it on by calling
<tt>ExecutionEngine::DisableLazyCompilation(false)</tt>.</li>
<li>It is now possible to create more than one JIT instance in the same process.
These JITs can generate machine code in parallel,
although <a href="http://llvm.org/docs/ProgrammersManual.html#jitthreading">you
still have to obey the other threading restrictions</a>.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="codegen">Target Independent Code Generator Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>We have put a significant amount of work into the code generator
infrastructure, which allows us to implement more aggressive algorithms and make
it run faster:</p>
<ul>
<li>New instruction selector [blog post?].</li>
<li>New LSR with "full strength reduction" mode. Description?</li>
<li>Code generator MC'ized except for debug info and EH.</li>
<li>New CodeGen Level CSE</li>
<li>Combiner-AA improvements, why not on by default?</li>
<li>Pre-regalloc tail duplication</li>
<li>Codegen level OptimizeExtsPass pass, takes advantage of x86 subregs. </li>
<li>Support for the GCC option -fno-schedule-insns</li>
<li>Non-temporal load/store, only implemented on X86, see LangRef.html#i_load.</li>
<li>MachineSSAUpdater.h</li>
<li>X86 and XCore supports returning arbitrary return values, returning too many values is
supported by returning through a hidden pointer.</li>
<li>verbose-asm now produces information about spill slots and loop nests</li>
<li>GHC Haskell ABI / calling conv support.</li>
<li>Many improvements to debug info</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="x86">X86-32 and X86-64 Target Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>New features of the X86 target include:
</p>
<ul>
<li>The X86 backend now optimizes tails calls much more aggressively for
functions that use the standard C calling convention.</li>
<li>The X86 backend now models scalar SSE registers as subregs of the SSE vector
registers, making the code generator more aggressive in cases where scalars
and vector types are mixed.</li>
<li>PostRA scheduler for X86? FIXME: is this on by default in 2.7?</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="ARM">ARM Target Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>New features of the ARM target include:
</p>
<ul>
<li>The ARM backend now generates instructions in unified assembly syntax.</li>
<li>llvm-gcc now has complete support for the ARM v7 NEON instruction set. This
support differs slightly from the GCC implementation. Please see the
<a
href="http://blog.llvm.org/2010/04/arm-advanced-simd-neon-intrinsics-and.html">
ARM Advanced SIMD (NEON) Intrinsics and Types in LLVM Blog Post</a> for
helpful information if migrating code from GCC to LLVM-GCC.</li>
<li>The ARM and Thumb code generators now using register scavenging for stack
object address materialization.(FIXME: WHAT BENEFIT DOES THIS PROVIDE?)</li>
<li>The ARM backend now has good support for ARMv4 targets, and has been tested
on StrongARM hardware. Previously, LLVM only supported ARMv4T and
newer chips.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="newapis">New Useful APIs</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This release includes a number of new APIs that are used internally, which
may also be useful for external clients.
</p>
<ul>
<li>The llvm/Support/Regex.h header exposes a platform independent regular
expression API. Building on this, the <a
href="TestingGuide.html#FileCheck">FileCheck</a> utility now supports
regular exressions.</li>
<li>raw_ostream now supports a circular "debug stream" accessed with "dbgs()".
By default, this stream works the same way as "errs()", but if you pass
<tt>-debug-buffer-size=1000</tt> to opt, the debug stream is capped to a
fixed sized circular buffer and the output is printed at the end of the
program's execution. This is helpful if you have a long lived compiler
process and you're interested in seeing snapshots in time.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="otherimprovements">Other Improvements and New Features</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Other miscellaneous features include:</p>
<ul>
<li>You can now build LLVM as a big dynamic library (e.g. "libllvm2.7.so"). To
get this, configure LLVM with the --enable-shared option.</li>
<li>LLVM command line tools now overwrite their output by default, before they
would only do this with -f. This makes them more convenient to use, and
behave more like standard unix tools.</li>
<li>The opt and llc tools now autodetect whether their input is a .ll or .bc
file, and automatically do the right thing. This means you don't need to
explicitly use the llvm-as tool for most things.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="changes">Major Changes and Removed Features</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>If you're already an LLVM user or developer with out-of-tree changes based
on LLVM 2.6, this section lists some "gotchas" that you may run into upgrading
from the previous release.</p>
<ul>
<li>
The Andersen's alias analysis ("anders-aa") pass, the Predicate Simplifier
("predsimplify") pass, the LoopVR pass, the GVNPRE pass, and the random sampling
profiling ("rsprofiling") passes have all been removed. They were not being
actively maintained and had substantial problems. If you are interested in
these components, you are welcome to ressurect them from SVN, fix the
correctness problems, and resubmit them to mainline.</li>
<li>LLVM now defaults to building most libraries with RTTI turned off, providing
a code size reduction. Packagers who are interested in building LLVM to support
plugins that require RTTI information should build with "make REQUIRE_RTTI=1"
and should read the new <a href="Packaging.html">Advice on Packaging LLVM</a>
document.</li>
<li>The LLVM interpreter now defaults to <em>not</em> using <tt>libffi</tt> even
if you have it installed. This makes it more likely that an LLVM built on one
system will work when copied to a similar system. To use <tt>libffi</tt>,
configure with <tt>--enable-libffi</tt></li>.
<li>Debug information uses a completely different representation, an LLVM 2.6
.bc file should work with LLVM 2.7, but debug info won't come forward.</li>
<li>The LLVM 2.6 (and earlier) "malloc" and "free" instructions got removed,
along with LowerAllocations pass. Now you should just use a call to the
malloc and free functions in libc. These calls are optimized as well as
the old instructions were.</li>
</ul>
<p>In addition, many APIs have changed in this release. Some of the major LLVM
API changes are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Just about everything has been converted to use raw_ostream instead of
std::ostream.</li>
<li>llvm/ADT/iterator.h has been removed, just use &lt;iterator&gt;
instead.</li>
<li>The Streams.h file and "DOUT" got removed, use "DEBUG(errs() &lt;&lt; ...);"
instead.</li>
<li><tt>ModuleProvider</tt> has been <a
href="http://llvm.org/viewvc/llvm-project?view=rev&revision=94686">removed</a>
and its methods moved to <tt>Module</tt> and <tt>GlobalValue</tt>.
Most clients can remove uses of <tt>ExistingModuleProvider</tt>,
replace <tt>getBitcodeModuleProvider</tt> with
<tt>getLazyBitcodeModule</tt>, and pass their <tt>Module</tt> to
functions that used to accept <tt>ModuleProvider</tt>. Clients who
wrote their own <tt>ModuleProvider</tt>s will need to derive from
<tt>GVMaterializer</tt> instead and use
<tt>Module::setMaterializer</tt> to attach it to a
<tt>Module</tt>.</li>
<li><tt>GhostLinkage</tt> has given up the ghost.
<tt>GlobalValue</tt>s that have not yet been read from their backing
storage have the same linkage they will have after being read in.
Clients must replace calls to
<tt>GlobalValue::hasNotBeenReadFromBitcode</tt> with
<tt>GlobalValue::isMaterializable</tt>.</li>
<li>The <tt>llvm/Support/DataTypes.h</tt> header has moved
to <tt>llvm/System/DataTypes.h</tt>.</li>
<li>The <tt>isInteger</tt>, <tt>isIntOrIntVector</tt>, <tt>isFloatingPoint</tt>,
<tt>isFPOrFPVector</tt> and <tt>isFPOrFPVector</tt> methods have been renamed
<tt>isIntegerTy</tt>, <tt>isIntOrIntVectorTy</tt>, <tt>isFloatingPointTy</tt>,
<tt>isFPOrFPVectorTy</tt> and <tt>isFPOrFPVectorTy</tt> respectively.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="portability">Portability and Supported Platforms</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>LLVM is known to work on the following platforms:</p>
<ul>
<li>Intel and AMD machines (IA32, X86-64, AMD64, EMT-64) running Red Hat
Linux, Fedora Core, FreeBSD and AuroraUX (and probably other unix-like
systems).</li>
<li>PowerPC and X86-based Mac OS X systems, running 10.3 and above in 32-bit
and 64-bit modes.</li>
<li>Intel and AMD machines running on Win32 using MinGW libraries (native).</li>
<li>Intel and AMD machines running on Win32 with the Cygwin libraries (limited
support is available for native builds with Visual C++).</li>
<li>Sun x86 and AMD64 machines running Solaris 10, OpenSolaris 0906.</li>
<li>Alpha-based machines running Debian GNU/Linux.</li>
</ul>
<p>The core LLVM infrastructure uses GNU autoconf to adapt itself
to the machine and operating system on which it is built. However, minor
porting may be required to get LLVM to work on new platforms. We welcome your
portability patches and reports of successful builds or error messages.</p>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="knownproblems">Known Problems</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This section contains significant known problems with the LLVM system,
listed by component. If you run into a problem, please check the <a
href="http://llvm.org/bugs/">LLVM bug database</a> and submit a bug if
there isn't already one.</p>
<ul>
<li>LLVM will not correctly compile on Solaris and/or OpenSolaris
using the stock GCC 3.x.x series 'out the box',
See: <a href="GettingStarted.html#brokengcc">Broken versions of GCC and other tools</a>.
However, A <a href="http://pkg.auroraux.org/GCC">Modern GCC Build</a>
for x86/x86-64 has been made available from the third party AuroraUX Project
that has been meticulously tested for bootstrapping LLVM &amp; Clang.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="experimental">Experimental features included with this release</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The following components of this LLVM release are either untested, known to
be broken or unreliable, or are in early development. These components should
not be relied on, and bugs should not be filed against them, but they may be
useful to some people. In particular, if you would like to work on one of these
components, please contact us on the <a
href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">LLVMdev list</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li>The MSIL, Alpha, SPU, MIPS, PIC16, Blackfin, MSP430, SystemZ and MicroBlaze
backends are experimental.</li>
<li>The <tt>llc</tt> "<tt>-filetype=asm</tt>" (the default) is the only
supported value for this option. The MachO writer is experimental, and
works much better in mainline SVN.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="x86-be">Known problems with the X86 back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>The X86 backend does not yet support
all <a href="http://llvm.org/PR879">inline assembly that uses the X86
floating point stack</a>. It supports the 'f' and 't' constraints, but not
'u'.</li>
<li>The X86 backend generates inefficient floating point code when configured
to generate code for systems that don't have SSE2.</li>
<li>Win64 code generation wasn't widely tested. Everything should work, but we
expect small issues to happen. Also, llvm-gcc cannot build the mingw64
runtime currently due
to <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2255">several</a>
<a href="http://llvm.org/PR2257">bugs</a> and due to lack of support for
the
'u' inline assembly constraint and for X87 floating point inline assembly.</li>
<li>The X86-64 backend does not yet support the LLVM IR instruction
<tt>va_arg</tt>. Currently, the llvm-gcc and front-ends support variadic
argument constructs on X86-64 by lowering them manually.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="ppc-be">Known problems with the PowerPC back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>The Linux PPC32/ABI support needs testing for the interpreter and static
compilation, and lacks support for debug information.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="arm-be">Known problems with the ARM back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>Thumb mode works only on ARMv6 or higher processors. On sub-ARMv6
processors, thumb programs can crash or produce wrong
results (<a href="http://llvm.org/PR1388">PR1388</a>).</li>
<li>Compilation for ARM Linux OABI (old ABI) is supported but not fully tested.
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="sparc-be">Known problems with the SPARC back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>The SPARC backend only supports the 32-bit SPARC ABI (-m32); it does not
support the 64-bit SPARC ABI (-m64).</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="mips-be">Known problems with the MIPS back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>64-bit MIPS targets are not supported yet.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="alpha-be">Known problems with the Alpha back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>On 21164s, some rare FP arithmetic sequences which may trap do not have the
appropriate nops inserted to ensure restartability.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="c-be">Known problems with the C back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li><a href="http://llvm.org/PR802">The C backend has only basic support for
inline assembly code</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://llvm.org/PR1658">The C backend violates the ABI of common
C++ programs</a>, preventing intermixing between C++ compiled by the CBE and
C++ code compiled with <tt>llc</tt> or native compilers.</li>
<li>The C backend does not support all exception handling constructs.</li>
<li>The C backend does not support arbitrary precision integers.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="c-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc C and C++ front-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The only major language feature of GCC not supported by llvm-gcc is
the <tt>__builtin_apply</tt> family of builtins. However, some extensions
are only supported on some targets. For example, trampolines are only
supported on some targets (these are used when you take the address of a
nested function).</p>
<p>If you run into GCC extensions which are not supported, please let us know.
</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="fortran-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc Fortran front-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>Fortran support generally works, but there are still several unresolved bugs
in <a href="http://llvm.org/bugs/">Bugzilla</a>. Please see the
tools/gfortran component for details.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="ada-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc Ada front-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
The llvm-gcc 4.2 Ada compiler works fairly well; however, this is not a mature
technology, and problems should be expected.
<ul>
<li>The Ada front-end currently only builds on X86-32. This is mainly due
to lack of trampoline support (pointers to nested functions) on other platforms.
However, it <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2006">also fails to build on X86-64</a>
which does support trampolines.</li>
<li>The Ada front-end <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2007">fails to bootstrap</a>.
This is due to lack of LLVM support for <tt>setjmp</tt>/<tt>longjmp</tt> style
exception handling, which is used internally by the compiler.
Workaround: configure with <tt>--disable-bootstrap</tt>.</li>
<li>The c380004, <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2010">c393010</a>
and <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2421">cxg2021</a> ACATS tests fail
(c380004 also fails with gcc-4.2 mainline).
If the compiler is built with checks disabled then <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2010">c393010</a>
causes the compiler to go into an infinite loop, using up all system memory.</li>
<li>Some GCC specific Ada tests continue to crash the compiler.</li>
<li>The <tt>-E</tt> binder option (exception backtraces)
<a href="http://llvm.org/PR1982">does not work</a> and will result in programs
crashing if an exception is raised. Workaround: do not use <tt>-E</tt>.</li>
<li>Only discrete types <a href="http://llvm.org/PR1981">are allowed to start
or finish at a non-byte offset</a> in a record. Workaround: do not pack records
or use representation clauses that result in a field of a non-discrete type
starting or finishing in the middle of a byte.</li>
<li>The <tt>lli</tt> interpreter <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2009">considers
'main' as generated by the Ada binder to be invalid</a>.
Workaround: hand edit the file to use pointers for <tt>argv</tt> and
<tt>envp</tt> rather than integers.</li>
<li>The <tt>-fstack-check</tt> option <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2008">is
ignored</a>.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="additionalinfo">Additional Information</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>A wide variety of additional information is available on the <a
href="http://llvm.org">LLVM web page</a>, in particular in the <a
href="http://llvm.org/docs/">documentation</a> section. The web page also
contains versions of the API documentation which is up-to-date with the
Subversion version of the source code.
You can access versions of these documents specific to this release by going
into the "<tt>llvm/doc/</tt>" directory in the LLVM tree.</p>
<p>If you have any questions or comments about LLVM, please feel free to contact
us via the <a href="http://llvm.org/docs/#maillist"> mailing
lists</a>.</p>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
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