<ol>
<li><a href="#hardware">Hardware</a>
<li><a href="#software">Software</a>
- <li><a href="#brokengcc">Broken versions of GCC</a>
+ <li><a href="#brokengcc">Broken versions of GCC and other tools</a>
</ol></li>
<li><a href="#starting">Getting Started with LLVM</a>
<p>The second piece is the GCC front end. This component provides a version of
GCC that compiles C and C++ code into LLVM bytecode. Currently, the GCC front
-end is a modified version of GCC 3.4 (we track the GCC 3.4 development). Once
+end uses the GCC parser to convert code to LLVM. Once
compiled into LLVM bytecode, a program can be manipulated with the LLVM tools
from the LLVM suite.</p>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
- <a name="brokengcc">Broken versions of GCC</a>
+ <a name="brokengcc">Broken versions of GCC and other tools</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>LLVM is very demanding of the host C++ compiler, and as such tends to expose
bugs in the compiler. In particular, several versions of GCC crash when trying
to compile LLVM. We routinely use GCC 3.3.3, 3.4.0, and Apple 4.0.1
-successfully with them (however, see below). Other versions of GCC will
-probably work as well. GCC versions listed
+successfully with them (however, see important notes below). Other versions
+of GCC will probably work as well. GCC versions listed
here are known to not work. If you are using one of these versions, please try
to upgrade your GCC to something more recent. If you run into a problem with a
version of GCC not listed here, please <a href="mailto:llvmdev@cs.uiuc.edu">let
possibly others) does not compile LLVM correctly (it appears that exception
handling is broken in some cases). Please download the FSF 3.3.3 or upgrade
to a newer version of GCC.</p>
+<p><b>GCC 3.4.0</b> on linux/x86 (32-bit)</b>: GCC miscompiles portions of the
+ code generator, causing an infinite loop in the llvm-gcc build when built
+ with optimizations enabled (i.e. a release build).</p>
+<p><b>GCC 3.4.2</b> on linux/x86 (32-bit)</b>: GCC miscompiles portions of the
+ code generator at -O3, as with 3.4.0. However gcc 3.4.2 (unlike 3.4.0)
+ correctly compiles LLVM at -O2. A work around is to build release LLVM
+ builds with "make ENABLE_OPTIMIZED=1 OPTIMIZE_OPTION=-O2 ..."</p>
+<p><b>GCC 3.4.x</b> on X86-64/amd64</b>: GCC <a href="http://llvm.org/PR1056">
+ miscompiles portions of LLVM</a>.</p>
<p><b>IA-64 GCC 4.0.0</b>: The IA-64 version of GCC 4.0.0 is known to
miscompile LLVM.</p>
<p><b>Apple Xcode 2.3</b>: GCC crashes when compiling LLVM at -O3 (which is the
miscompiles portions of LLVM</a> when compiling llvm itself into 64-bit
code. LLVM will appear to mostly work but will be buggy, e.g. failing
portions of its testsuite.</p>
+<p><b>GCC 4.1.2 on OpenSUSE</b>: Seg faults during libstdc++ build and on x86_64
+platforms compiling md5.c gets a mangled constant.</p>
<p><b>GNU ld 2.16.X</b>. Some 2.16.X versions of the ld linker will produce very
long warning messages complaining that some ".gnu.linkonce.t.*" symbol was
defined in a discarded section. You can safely ignore these messages as they are
erroneous and the linkage is correct. These messages disappear using ld
2.17.</p>
+
+<p><b>GNU binutils 2.17</b>: Binutils 2.17 contains <a
+href="http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3111">a bug</a> which
+causes huge link times (minutes instead of seconds) when building LLVM. We
+recommend upgrading to a newer version (2.17.50.0.4 or later).</p>
+
</div>
labels:</p>
<ul>
+<li>Release 2.0: <b>RELEASE_20</b></li>
<li>Release 1.9: <b>RELEASE_19</b></li>
<li>Release 1.8: <b>RELEASE_18</b></li>
<li>Release 1.7: <b>RELEASE_17</b></li>
configured by the LLVM configure script as well as automatically updated when
you run <tt>cvs update</tt>.</p>
-<p>If you would like to get the GCC 3.4 front end source code, you can also get it from the CVS repository:</p>
-
-<pre>
- cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anon@llvm.org:/var/cvs/llvm co llvm-gcc
-</pre>
-
-<p>Please note that you must follow <a href="CFEBuildInstrs.html">these
-instructions</a> to successfully build the LLVM GCC front-end.</p>
+<p>If you would like to get the GCC front end source code, you can also get it
+and build it yourself. Please follow <a href="CFEBuildInstrs.html">these
+instructions</a> to successfully get and build the LLVM GCC front-end.</p>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>Before configuring and compiling the LLVM suite, you need to extract the LLVM
-GCC front end from the binary distribution. It is used for building the
-bytecode libraries later used by the GCC front end for linking programs, and its
-location must be specified when the LLVM suite is configured.</p>
+<p>Before configuring and compiling the LLVM suite, you can optionally extract the
+LLVM GCC front end from the binary distribution. It is used for running the
+llvm-test testsuite and for compiling C/C++ programs. Note that you can optionally
+<a href="CFEBuildInstrs.html">build llvm-gcc yourself</a> after building the
+main LLVM repository.</p>
<p>To install the GCC front end, do the following:</p>
-</tt></li>
</ol>
+<p>Once the binary is uncompressed, you should add a symlink for llvm-gcc and
+llvm-g++ to some directory in your path. When you configure LLVM, it will
+automatically detect llvm-gcc's presence (if it is in your path) enabling its
+use in llvm-test. Note that you can always build or install llvm-gcc at any
+pointer after building the main LLVM repository: just reconfigure llvm and
+llvm-test will pick it up.
+</p>
+
<p>The binary versions of the GCC front end may not suit all of your needs. For
example, the binary distribution may include an old version of a system header
file, not "fix" a header file that needs to be fixed for GCC, or it may be
<p>In cases like these, you may want to try <a
href="CFEBuildInstrs.html">building the GCC front end from source.</a> This is
-not for the faint of heart, so be forewarned.</p>
+much easier now than it was in the past.</p>
</div>
documentation from the source code. This is disabled by default because
generating the documentation can take a long time and producess 100s of
megabytes of output.</dd>
+ <dt><i>--with-udis86</i></dt>
+ <dd>LLVM can use external disassembler library for various purposes (now it's
+ used only for examining code produced by JIT). This option will enable usage
+ of <a href="http://udis86.sourceforge.net/">udis86</a> x86 (both 32 and 64
+ bits) disassembler library.</dd>
</dl>
<p>To configure LLVM, follow these steps:</p>
LLVM assembly.</dd>
<dt><tt><b>llvm-ld</b></tt></dt>
- <dd><tt>llvm-ld</tt> is very similar to gccld and provides a general purpose
- and extensible linker for LLVM. This is the linker invoked by <tt>llvmc</tt>.
- It allows optimization modules to be loaded so that language specific
- optimizations can be applied at link time. This tool is considered
- experimental.</dd>
+ <dd><tt>llvm-ld</tt> is a general purpose and extensible linker for LLVM.
+ This is the linker invoked by <tt>llvmc</tt>. It performsn standard link time
+ optimizations and allows optimization modules to be loaded and run so that
+ language specific optimizations can be applied at link time.</dd>
<dt><tt><b>llvm-link</b></tt></dt>
<dd><tt>llvm-link</tt>, not surprisingly, links multiple LLVM modules into
the -march=c option).</dd>
<dt><tt><b>llvm-gcc</b></tt></dt>
- <dd><tt>llvm-gcc</tt> is a GCC-based C frontend
- that has been retargeted to emit LLVM code as the machine code output. It
- works just like any other GCC compiler, taking the typical <tt>-c, -S, -E,
- -o</tt> options that are typically used. The source code for the
- <tt>llvm-gcc</tt> tool is available as a separate CVS module.
- <blockquote>
- <dl>
- <dt><tt><b>gccas</b></tt></dt>
- <dd>This tool is invoked by the <tt>llvm-gcc</tt> frontend as the
- "assembler" part of the compiler. This tool actually assembles LLVM
- assembly to LLVM bytecode, performs a variety of optimizations, and
- outputs LLVM bytecode. Thus when you invoke
- <tt>llvm-gcc -c x.c -o x.o</tt>, you are causing <tt>gccas</tt> to be
- run, which writes the <tt>x.o</tt> file (which is an LLVM bytecode file
- that can be disassembled or manipulated just like any other bytecode
- file). The command line interface to <tt>gccas</tt> is designed to be
- as close as possible to the <b>system</b> `<tt>as</tt>' utility so that
- the gcc frontend itself did not have to be modified to interface to
- a "weird" assembler.</dd>
-
- <dt><tt><b>gccld</b></tt></dt>
- <dd><tt>gccld</tt> links together several LLVM bytecode files into one
- bytecode file and does some optimization. It is the linker invoked by
- the GCC frontend when multiple .o files need to be linked together.
- Like <tt>gccas</tt>, the command line interface of <tt>gccld</tt> is
- designed to match the system linker, to aid interfacing with the GCC
- frontend.</dd>
- </dl>
- </blockquote>
- </dd>
+ <dd><tt>llvm-gcc</tt> is a GCC-based C frontend that has been retargeted to
+ use LLVM as its backend instead of GCC's RTL backend. It can also emit LLVM
+ byte code or assembly (with the <tt>-emit-llvm</tt> option) instead of the
+ usual machine code output. It works just like any other GCC compiler,
+ taking the typical <tt>-c, -S, -E, -o</tt> options that are typically used.
+ Additionally, the the source code for <tt>llvm-gcc</tt> is available as a
+ separate CVS module.</dd>
<dt><tt><b>opt</b></tt></dt>
<dd><tt>opt</tt> reads LLVM bytecode, applies a series of LLVM to LLVM
directory, switch to directory <tt>llvm/tools/llc</tt> and build it,
causing a re-linking of LLC.<br><br>
- <dt><tt><b>NightlyTest.pl</b></tt> and
+ <dt><tt><b>NewNightlyTest.pl</b></tt> and
<tt><b>NightlyTestTemplate.html</b></tt> <dd>These files are used in a
cron script to generate nightly status reports of the functionality of
tools, and the results can be seen by following the appropriate link on