+
<!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 1.9 Release Notes</title>
+ <title>LLVM 2.3 Release Notes</title>
</head>
<body>
-<div class="doc_title">LLVM 1.9 Release Notes</div>
+<div class="doc_title">LLVM 2.3 Release Notes</div>
<ol>
<li><a href="#intro">Introduction</a></li>
+ <li><a href="#changes">Major Changes and Sub-project Status</a></li>
<li><a href="#whatsnew">What's New?</a></li>
<li><a href="GettingStarted.html">Installation Instructions</a></li>
<li><a href="#portability">Portability and Supported Platforms</a></li>
<p>Written by the <a href="http://llvm.org">LLVM Team</a><p>
</div>
+<!-- Done through Week-of-Mon-20080324.txt -->
+
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="intro">Introduction</a>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This document contains the release notes for the LLVM compiler
-infrastructure, release 1.9. Here we describe the status of LLVM, including any
-known problems and major improvements from the previous release. The most
-up-to-date version of this document (corresponding to LLVM CVS) can be found
-on the <a
-href="http://llvm.org/releases/">LLVM releases web site</a>. If you are
-not reading this on the LLVM web pages, you should probably go there because
-this document may be updated after the release.</p>
+infrastructure, release 2.3. Here we describe the status of LLVM, including
+major improvements from the previous release and any 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
href="http://mail.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 CVS 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 the current or previous releases, see the <a
-href="http://llvm.org/releases/">releases page</a>.</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 releases, please see the
+<a href="http://llvm.org/releases/">releases page</a>.</p>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
- <a name="whatsnew">What's New?</a>
+ <a name="changes">Major Changes and Sub-project Status</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>This is the tenth public release of the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure. This
-release incorporates a large number of enhancements and new features.
-</p>
+<p>This is the fourteenth public release of the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure.
+It includes a large number of features and refinements from LLVM 2.2.</p>
</div>
+<!-- Unfinished features in 2.3:
+ Machine LICM
+ Machine Sinking
+ LegalizeDAGTypes
+ -->
+
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
-<a name="newfeatures">New Features in LLVM 1.9</a>
+<a name="changes">Major Changes in LLVM 2.3</a>
</div>
-<!--_________________________________________________________________________-->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection"><a name="elfdwarf">DWARF debugging
-support for X86/ELF</a></div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>The llvm-gcc4 C front-end now generates debugging info for C and C++ for
-X86/ELF platforms (Linux). This extends the PPC/Darwin and X86/Darwin debugging
-support available in release 18.8 DWARF is a standard debugging format used on
-many platforms.</p>
-</div>
-<!--_________________________________________________________________________-->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection"><a name="signedinst">Signed Instructions</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
-<p>As a step towards making LLVM's integer types signless, several new
-instructions have been added to LLVM. The DIV instruction has become UDIV, SDIV,
-and FDIV. The REM instruction has become UREM, SREM and FREM. The SHR
-instruction has become ASHR and LSHR. See the <a href="LangRef.html">Language
- Reference</a> for details on these new instructions.</p>
-</div>
+<p>LLVM 2.3 no longer supports llvm-gcc 4.0, it has been replaced with
+ llvm-gcc 4.2.</p>
-<!--_________________________________________________________________________-->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection"><a name="featureA">New Feature C</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
-<p>Describe feature C here.</p>
-</div>
+<p>LLVM 2.3 no longer includes the <tt>llvm-upgrade</tt> tool. It was useful
+ for upgrading LLVM 1.9 files to LLVM 2.x syntax, but you can always use a
+ previous LLVM release to do this. One nice impact of this is that the LLVM
+ regression test suite no longer depends on llvm-upgrade, which makes it run
+ faster.</p>
-<!--_________________________________________________________________________-->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection"><a name="featureB">New Feature D</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
-<p>Describe feature D here.</p>
-</div>
+<p>The <tt>llvm2cpp</tt> tool has been folded into llc, use
+ <tt>llc -march=cpp</tt> instead of <tt>llvm2cpp</tt>.</p>
-<!--_________________________________________________________________________-->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection"><a name="jitrelease">New Feature E</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
-<p>Describe feature E here.</p>
-</div>
-
-<!--_________________________________________________________________________-->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection"><a name="other">Other Improvements</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
-<p>This release includes many other improvements, including improvements to
- the optimizers and code generators (improving the generated code) changes to
- speed up the compiler in many ways (improving algorithms and fine tuning
- code), and changes to reduce the code size of the compiler itself.</p>
-
-<p>More specific changes include:</p>
+<p>LLVM API Changes:</p>
<ul>
-<li>LLVM 1.8 includes an initial ARM backend. This backend is in early
- development stages.</li>
-<li>LLVM 1.8 now includes significantly better support for mingw and
- cygwin.</li>
-<li>The <a href="CommandGuide/html/llvm-config.html">llvm-config</a> tool is
- now built by default and has several new features.</li>
-<li>The X86 and PPC backends now use the correct platform ABI for passing
- vectors as arguments to functions.</li>
-<li>The X86 backend now includes support for the Microsoft ML assembler
- ("MASM").</li>
-<li>The PowerPC backend now pattern matches the 'rlwimi' instruction more
- aggressively.</li>
-<li>Most of LLVM is now built with "-pedantic", ensuring better portability
- to more C++ Compilers.</li>
-<li>The PowerPC backend now includes initial 64-bit support. The JIT is not
- complete, and the static compiler has a couple of known bugs, but support
- is mostly in place. LLVM 1.9 will include completed PPC-64 support. </li>
+<li>Several core LLVM IR classes have migrated to use the
+ '<tt>FOOCLASS::Create(...)</tt>' pattern instead of '<tt>new
+ FOOCLASS(...)</tt>' (e.g. where FOOCLASS=<tt>BasicBlock</tt>). We hope to
+ standardize on <tt>FOOCLASS::Create</tt> for all IR classes in the future,
+ but not all of them have been moved over yet.</li>
+<li>LLVM 2.3 renames the LLVMBuilder and LLVMFoldingBuilder classes to
+ <a href="http://llvm.org/doxygen/classllvm_1_1IRBuilder.html">IRBuilder</a>.
+ </li>
+<li>MRegisterInfo was renamed to
+ <a href="http://llvm.org/doxygen/classllvm_1_1TargetRegisterInfo.html">
+ TargetRegisterInfo</a>.</li>
+<li>The MappedFile class is gone, please use
+ <a href="http://llvm.org/doxygen/classllvm_1_1MemoryBuffer.html">
+ MemoryBuffer</a> instead.</li>
+<li>The '<tt>-enable-eh</tt>' flag to llc has been removed. Now code should
+ encode whether it is safe to omit unwind information for a function by
+ tagging the Function object with the '<tt>nounwind</tt>' attribute.</li>
+<li>The ConstantFP::get method that uses APFloat now takes one argument
+ instead of two. The type argument has been removed, and the type is
+ now inferred from the size of the given APFloat value.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
-<a name="changes">Significant Changes in LLVM 1.8</a>
+<a name="otherprojects">Other LLVM Sub-Projects</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<ul>
-<li>The LLVM "SparcV9" backend (deprecated in LLVM 1.7) has been removed in
-LLVM 1.8. The LLVM "Sparc" backend replaces it.</li>
-<li>The --version option now prints more useful information, including the
- build configuration for the tool.</li>
-</ul>
+<p>
+The core LLVM 2.3 distribution currently consists of code from the core LLVM
+repository (which roughly contains the LLVM optimizer, code generators and
+supporting tools) and the llvm-gcc repository. In addition to this code, the
+LLVM Project includes other sub-projects that are in development. The two which
+are the most actively developed are the new <a href="#vmkit">vmkit Project</a>
+and the <a href="#clang">Clang Project</a>.
+</p>
</div>
-
-<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
-<div class="doc_section">
- <a name="portability">Portability and Supported Platforms</a>
+<!--=========================================================================-->
+<div class="doc_subsubsection">
+<a name="vmkit">vmkit</a>
</div>
-<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
+<p>
+The "vmkit" project is a new addition to the LLVM family. It is an
+implementation of a JVM and a CLI Virtual Machines (Microsoft .NET is an
+implementation of the CLI) using the Just-In-Time compiler of LLVM.</p>
+
+<p>The JVM, called JnJVM, executes real-world applications such as Apache
+projects (e.g. Felix and Tomcat) and the SpecJVM98 benchmark. It uses the GNU
+Classpath project for the base classes. The CLI implementation, called N3, is
+its in early stages but can execute simple applications and the "pnetmark"
+benchmark. It uses the pnetlib project as its core library.</p>
+
+<p>The 'vmkit' VMs compare in performance with industrial and top open-source
+VMs on scientific applications. Besides the JIT, the VMs use many features of
+the LLVM framework, including the standard set of optimizations, atomic
+operations, custom function provider and memory manager for JITed methods, and
+specific virtual machine optimizations. vmkit is not an official part of LLVM
+2.3 release. It is publicly available under the LLVM license and can be
+downloaded from:
+</p>
-<p>LLVM is known to work on the following platforms:</p>
+<div class="doc_code">
+<pre>svn co http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/vmkit/trunk vmkit</pre>
+</div>
-<ul>
- <li>Intel and AMD machines running Red Hat Linux, Fedora Core and FreeBSD
- (and probably other unix-like systems).</li>
-<li>Intel and AMD machines running on Win32 using MinGW libraries (native)</li>
-<li>Sun UltraSPARC workstations running Solaris 8.</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>PowerPC and X86-based Mac OS X systems, running 10.2 and above.</li>
-<li>Alpha-based machines running Debian GNU/Linux.</li>
-<li>Itanium-based machines running Linux and HP-UX.</li>
-</ul>
+</div>
-<p>The core LLVM infrastructure uses
-<a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/">GNU autoconf</a> 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 class="doc_subsubsection">
+<a name="clang">Clang</a>
+</div>
+
+<div class="doc_text">
+
+<p>The <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/">Clang project</a> is an effort to build
+a set of new 'LLVM native' front-end technologies for the LLVM optimizer
+and code generator. Clang is continuing to make major strides forward in all
+areas. Its C and Objective-C parsing support is very solid, and the code
+generation support is far enough along to build many C applications. While not
+yet production quality, it is progressing very nicely. In addition, C++
+front-end work has started to make significant progress.</p>
+
+<p>At this point, Clang is most useful if you are interested in source-to-source
+transformations (such as refactoring) and other source-level tools for C and
+Objective-C. Clang now also includes tools for turning C code into pretty HTML,
+and includes a new <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/StaticAnalysis.html">static
+analysis tool</a> in development. This tool focuses on automatically finding
+bugs in C and Objective-C code.</p>
</div>
+
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
- <a name="knownproblems">Known Problems</a>
+ <a name="whatsnew">What's New?</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>This section contains all known problems with the LLVM system, listed by
-component. As new problems are discovered, they will be added to these
-sections. 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>
-
+<p>LLVM 2.3 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>
</div>
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
+<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
- <a name="experimental">Experimental features included with this release</a>
+<a name="majorfeatures">Major New Features</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>
+<p>LLVM 2.3 includes several major new capabilities:</p>
<ul>
-<li>The <tt>-cee</tt> pass is known to be buggy, and may be removed in in a
- future release.</li>
-<li>The IA64 code generator is experimental.</li>
-<li>The Alpha JIT is experimental.</li>
-<li>"<tt>-filetype=asm</tt>" (the default) is the only supported value for the
- <tt>-filetype</tt> llc option.</li>
+<li><p>The biggest change in LLVM 2.3 is Multiple Return Value (MRV) support.
+ MRVs allow LLVM IR to directly represent functions that return multiple
+ values without having to pass them "by reference" in the LLVM IR. This
+ allows a front-end to generate more efficient code, as MRVs are generally
+ returned in registers if a target supports them. See the <a
+ href="LangRef.html#i_getresult">LLVM IR Reference</a> for more details.</p>
+
+ <p>MRVs are fully supported in the LLVM IR, but are not yet fully supported in
+ on all targets. However, it is generally safe to return up to 2 values from
+ a function: most targets should be able to handle at least that. MRV
+ support is a critical requirement for X86-64 ABI support, as X86-64 requires
+ the ability to return multiple registers from functions, and we use MRVs to
+ accomplish this in a direct way.</p></li>
+
+<li><p>LLVM 2.3 includes a complete reimplementation of the "<tt>llvmc</tt>"
+ tool. It is designed to overcome several problems with the original
+ <tt>llvmc</tt> and to provide a superset of the features of the
+ '<tt>gcc</tt>' driver.</p>
+
+ <p>The main features of <tt>llvmc2</tt> are:
+ <ul>
+ <li>Extended handling of command line options and smart rules for
+ dispatching them to different tools.</li>
+ <li>Flexible (and extensible) rules for defining different tools.</li>
+ <li>The different intermediate steps performed by tools are represented
+ as edges in the abstract graph.</li>
+ <li>The 'language' for driver behavior definition is tablegen and thus
+ it's relatively easy to add new features.</li>
+ <li>The definition of driver is transformed into set of C++ classes, thus
+ no runtime interpretation is needed.</li>
+ </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li><p>LLVM 2.3 includes a completely rewritten interface for <a
+ href="LinkTimeOptimization.html">Link Time Optimization</a>. This interface
+ is written in C, which allows for easier integration with C code bases, and
+ incorporates improvements we learned about from the first incarnation of the
+ interface.</p></li>
+
+<li><p>The <a href="tutorial/LangImpl1.html">Kaleidoscope tutorial</a> now
+ includes a "port" of the tutorial that <a
+ href="tutorial/OCamlLangImpl1.html">uses the Ocaml bindings</a> to implement
+ the Kaleidoscope language.</p></li>
+
</ul>
</div>
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
+
+<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
- <a name="build">Known problems with the Build System</a>
+<a name="llvm-gcc">llvm-gcc 4.2 Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
+<p>LLVM 2.3 fully supports the llvm-gcc 4.2 front-end, and includes support
+for the C, C++, Objective-C, Ada, and Fortran front-ends.</p>
+
+<p>
<ul>
-<li>none yet</li>
+<li>llvm-gcc 4.2 includes numerous fixes to better support the Objective-C
+front-end. Objective-C now works very well on Mac OS/X.</li>
+
+<li>Fortran <tt>EQUIVALENCE</tt>s are now supported by the gfortran
+front-end.</li>
+
+<li>llvm-gcc 4.2 includes many other fixes which improve conformance with the
+relevant parts of the GCC testsuite.</li>
+
</ul>
+
</div>
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
+<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
- <a name="core">Known problems with the LLVM Core</a>
+<a name="coreimprovements">LLVM Core Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
+<p>New features include:
+</p>
<ul>
- <li>In the JIT, <tt>dlsym()</tt> on a symbol compiled by the JIT will not
- work.</li>
+<li>LLVM IR now directly represents "common" linkage, instead of representing it
+as a form of weak linkage.</li>
+
+<li>LLVM IR now has support for atomic operations, and this functionality can be
+accessed through the llvm-gcc "<tt>__sync_synchronize</tt>",
+"<tt>__sync_val_compare_and_swap</tt>", and related builtins. Support for
+atomics are available in the Alpha, X86, X86-64, and PowerPC backends.</li>
+
+<li>The C and Ocaml bindings have extended to cover pass managers, several
+transformation passes, iteration over the LLVM IR, target data, and parameter
+attribute lists.</li>
</ul>
+
</div>
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
+<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
- <a name="c-fe">Known problems with the C front-end</a>
+<a name="optimizer">Optimizer Improvements</a>
</div>
-<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection">Bugs</div>
-
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>
-llvm-gcc3 has many significant problems that are fixed by llvm-gcc4.
-Two major ones include:</p>
+<p>In addition to a huge array of bug fixes and minor performance tweaks, the
+LLVM 2.3 optimizers support a few major enhancements:</p>
<ul>
-<li>With llvm-gcc3,
- C99 variable sized arrays do not release stack memory when they go out of
- scope. Thus, the following program may run out of stack space:
+
+<li><p>Loop index set splitting on by default.
+This transformation hoists conditions from loop bodies and reduces a loop's
+iteration space to improve performance. For example,</p>
+
+<div class="doc_code">
<pre>
- for (i = 0; i != 1000000; ++i) {
- int X[n];
- foo(X);
- }
-</pre></li>
+for (i = LB; i < UB; ++i)
+ if (i <= NV)
+ LOOP_BODY
+</pre>
+</div>
-<li>With llvm-gcc3, Initialization of global union variables can only be done <a
-href="http://llvm.org/PR162">with the largest union member</a>.</li>
+<p>is transformed into:</p>
-</ul>
+<p><div class="doc_code">
+<pre>
+NUB = min(NV+1, UB)
+for (i = LB; i < NUB; ++i)
+ LOOP_BODY
+</pre>
+</div>
+</p>
+</li>
+
+<li>LLVM now includes a new <tt>memcpy</tt> optimization pass which removes
+dead <tt>memcpy</tt> calls, unneeded copies of aggregates, and performs
+return slot optimization. The LLVM optimizer now notices long sequences of
+consecutive stores and merges them into <tt>memcpy</tt>'s where profitable.</li>
+
+<li>Alignment detection for vector memory references and for <tt>memcpy</tt> and
+<tt>memset</tt> is now more aggressive.</li>
+
+<li>The Aggressive Dead Code Elimination (ADCE) optimization has been rewritten
+to make it both faster and safer in the presence of code containing infinite
+loops. Some of its prior functionality has been factored out into the loop
+deletion pass, which <em>is</em> safe for infinite loops. The new ADCE pass is
+no longer based on control dependence, making it run faster.</li>
+
+<li>The 'SimplifyLibCalls' pass, which optimizes calls to libc and libm
+ functions for C-based languages, has been rewritten to be a FunctionPass
+ instead a ModulePass. This allows it to be run more often and to be
+ included at -O1 in llvm-gcc. It was also extended to include more
+ optimizations and several corner case bugs were fixed.</li>
+
+<li>LLVM now includes a simple 'Jump Threading' pass, which attempts to simplify
+ conditional branches using information about predecessor blocks, simplifying
+ the control flow graph. This pass is pretty basic at this point, but
+ catches some important cases and provides a foundation to build on.</li>
+
+<li>Several corner case bugs which could lead to deleting volatile memory
+ accesses have been fixed.</li>
-<p>llvm-gcc4 is far more stable and produces better code than llvm-gcc3, but
-does not currently support Link-Time-Optimization or C++ Exception Handling,
-which llvm-gcc3 does.</p>
+<li>Several optimizations have been sped up, leading to faster code generation
+ with the same code quality.</li>
+
+</ul>
</div>
-<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection">
- Notes
+<!--=========================================================================-->
+<div class="doc_subsection">
+<a name="codegen">Code Generator Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<ul>
+<p>We 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>
-<li>"long double" is transformed by the front-end into "double". There is no
-support for floating point data types of any size other than 32 and 64
-bits.</li>
+<ul>
+<li>The code generator now has support for carrying information about memory
+ references throughout the entire code generation process, via the
+ <a href="http://llvm.org/doxygen/classllvm_1_1MachineMemOperand.html">
+ MachineMemOperand</a> class. In the future this will be used to improve
+ both pre-pass and post-pass scheduling, and to improve compiler-debugging
+ output.</li>
+
+<li>The target-independent code generator infrastructure now uses LLVM's
+ <a href="http://llvm.org/doxygen/classllvm_1_1APInt.html">APInt</a>
+ class to handle integer values, which allows it to support integer types
+ larger than 64 bits (for example i128). Note that support for such types is
+ also dependent on target-specific support. Use of APInt is also a step
+ toward support for non-power-of-2 integer sizes.</li>
-<li>The following Unix system functionality has not been tested and may not
-work:
- <ol>
- <li><tt>sigsetjmp</tt>, <tt>siglongjmp</tt> - These are not turned into the
- appropriate <tt>invoke</tt>/<tt>unwind</tt> instructions. Note that
- <tt>setjmp</tt> and <tt>longjmp</tt> <em>are</em> compiled correctly.
- <li><tt>getcontext</tt>, <tt>setcontext</tt>, <tt>makecontext</tt>
- - These functions have not been tested.
- </ol></li>
-
-<li>Although many GCC extensions are supported, some are not. In particular,
- the following extensions are known to <b>not be</b> supported:
- <ol>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Local-Labels.html#Local%20Labels">Local Labels</a>: Labels local to a block.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Nested-Functions.html#Nested%20Functions">Nested Functions</a>: As in Algol and Pascal, lexical scoping of functions.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Constructing-Calls.html#Constructing%20Calls">Constructing Calls</a>: Dispatching a call to another function.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Extended-Asm.html#Extended%20Asm">Extended Asm</a>: Assembler instructions with C expressions as operands.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Constraints.html#Constraints">Constraints</a>: Constraints for asm operands.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Asm-Labels.html#Asm%20Labels">Asm Labels</a>: Specifying the assembler name to use for a C symbol.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Explicit-Reg-Vars.html#Explicit%20Reg%20Vars">Explicit Reg Vars</a>: Defining variables residing in specified registers.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Vector-Extensions.html#Vector%20Extensions">Vector Extensions</a>: Using vector instructions through built-in functions.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Target-Builtins.html#Target%20Builtins">Target Builtins</a>: Built-in functions specific to particular targets.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Thread_002dLocal.html">Thread-Local</a>: Per-thread variables.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Pragmas.html#Pragmas">Pragmas</a>: Pragmas accepted by GCC.</li>
- </ol>
-
- <p>The following GCC extensions are <b>partially</b> supported. An ignored
- attribute means that the LLVM compiler ignores the presence of the attribute,
- but the code should still work. An unsupported attribute is one which is
- ignored by the LLVM compiler and will cause a different interpretation of
- the program.</p>
-
- <ol>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Variable-Length.html#Variable%20Length">Variable Length</a>:
- Arrays whose length is computed at run time.<br>
- Supported, but allocated stack space is not freed until the function returns (noted above).</li>
-
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Function-Attributes.html#Function%20Attributes">Function Attributes</a>:
-
- Declaring that functions have no side effects or that they can never
- return.<br>
-
- <b>Supported:</b> <tt>format</tt>, <tt>format_arg</tt>, <tt>non_null</tt>,
- <tt>noreturn</tt>, <tt>constructor</tt>, <tt>destructor</tt>,
- <tt>unused</tt>, <tt>used</tt>,
- <tt>deprecated</tt>, <tt>warn_unused_result</tt>, <tt>weak</tt><br>
-
- <b>Ignored:</b> <tt>noinline</tt>,
- <tt>always_inline</tt>, <tt>pure</tt>, <tt>const</tt>, <tt>nothrow</tt>,
- <tt>malloc</tt>, <tt>no_instrument_function</tt>, <tt>cdecl</tt><br>
-
- <b>Unsupported:</b> <tt>section</tt>, <tt>alias</tt>,
- <tt>visibility</tt>, <tt>regparm</tt>, <tt>stdcall</tt>,
- <tt>fastcall</tt>, all other target specific attributes</li>
-
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Variable-Attributes.html#Variable%20Attributes">Variable Attributes</a>:
- Specifying attributes of variables.<br>
- <b>Supported:</b> <tt>cleanup</tt>, <tt>common</tt>, <tt>nocommon</tt>,
- <tt>deprecated</tt>, <tt>transparent_union</tt>,
- <tt>unused</tt>, <tt>used</tt>, <tt>weak</tt><br>
-
- <b>Unsupported:</b> <tt>aligned</tt>, <tt>mode</tt>, <tt>packed</tt>,
- <tt>section</tt>, <tt>shared</tt>, <tt>tls_model</tt>,
- <tt>vector_size</tt>, <tt>dllimport</tt>,
- <tt>dllexport</tt>, all target specific attributes.</li>
-
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Type-Attributes.html#Type%20Attributes">Type Attributes</a>: Specifying attributes of types.<br>
- <b>Supported:</b> <tt>transparent_union</tt>, <tt>unused</tt>,
- <tt>deprecated</tt>, <tt>may_alias</tt><br>
-
- <b>Unsupported:</b> <tt>aligned</tt>, <tt>packed</tt>,
- all target specific attributes.</li>
-
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Other-Builtins.html#Other%20Builtins">Other Builtins</a>:
- Other built-in functions.<br>
- We support all builtins which have a C language equivalent (e.g.,
- <tt>__builtin_cos</tt>), <tt>__builtin_alloca</tt>,
- <tt>__builtin_types_compatible_p</tt>, <tt>__builtin_choose_expr</tt>,
- <tt>__builtin_constant_p</tt>, and <tt>__builtin_expect</tt>
- (currently ignored). We also support builtins for ISO C99 floating
- point comparison macros (e.g., <tt>__builtin_islessequal</tt>),
- <tt>__builtin_prefetch</tt>, <tt>__builtin_popcount[ll]</tt>,
- <tt>__builtin_clz[ll]</tt>, and <tt>__builtin_ctz[ll]</tt>.</li>
- </ol>
-
- <p>The following extensions <b>are</b> known to be supported:</p>
-
- <ol>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Labels-as-Values.html#Labels%20as%20Values">Labels as Values</a>: Getting pointers to labels and computed gotos.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Statement-Exprs.html#Statement%20Exprs">Statement Exprs</a>: Putting statements and declarations inside expressions.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Typeof.html#Typeof">Typeof</a>: <code>typeof</code>: referring to the type of an expression.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-3.4.0/gcc/Lvalues.html#Lvalues">Lvalues</a>: Using <code>?:</code>, "<code>,</code>" and casts in lvalues.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Conditionals.html#Conditionals">Conditionals</a>: Omitting the middle operand of a <code>?:</code> expression.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Long-Long.html#Long%20Long">Long Long</a>: Double-word integers.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Complex.html#Complex">Complex</a>: Data types for complex numbers.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Hex-Floats.html#Hex%20Floats">Hex Floats</a>:Hexadecimal floating-point constants.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Zero-Length.html#Zero%20Length">Zero Length</a>: Zero-length arrays.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Empty-Structures.html#Empty%20Structures">Empty Structures</a>: Structures with no members.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Variadic-Macros.html#Variadic%20Macros">Variadic Macros</a>: Macros with a variable number of arguments.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Escaped-Newlines.html#Escaped%20Newlines">Escaped Newlines</a>: Slightly looser rules for escaped newlines.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Subscripting.html#Subscripting">Subscripting</a>: Any array can be subscripted, even if not an lvalue.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Pointer-Arith.html#Pointer%20Arith">Pointer Arith</a>: Arithmetic on <code>void</code>-pointers and function pointers.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Initializers.html#Initializers">Initializers</a>: Non-constant initializers.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Compound-Literals.html#Compound%20Literals">Compound Literals</a>: Compound literals give structures, unions,
-or arrays as values.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Designated-Inits.html#Designated%20Inits">Designated Inits</a>: Labeling elements of initializers.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Cast-to-Union.html#Cast%20to%20Union">Cast to Union</a>: Casting to union type from any member of the union.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Case-Ranges.html#Case%20Ranges">Case Ranges</a>: `case 1 ... 9' and such.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Mixed-Declarations.html#Mixed%20Declarations">Mixed Declarations</a>: Mixing declarations and code.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Function-Prototypes.html#Function%20Prototypes">Function Prototypes</a>: Prototype declarations and old-style definitions.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/C_002b_002b-Comments.html#C_002b_002b-Comments">C++ Comments</a>: C++ comments are recognized.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Dollar-Signs.html#Dollar%20Signs">Dollar Signs</a>: Dollar sign is allowed in identifiers.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Character-Escapes.html#Character%20Escapes">Character Escapes</a>: <code>\e</code> stands for the character <ESC>.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Alignment.html#Alignment">Alignment</a>: Inquiring about the alignment of a type or variable.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Inline.html#Inline">Inline</a>: Defining inline functions (as fast as macros).</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Alternate-Keywords.html#Alternate%20Keywords">Alternate Keywords</a>:<code>__const__</code>, <code>__asm__</code>, etc., for header files.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Incomplete-Enums.html#Incomplete%20Enums">Incomplete Enums</a>: <code>enum foo;</code>, with details to follow.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Function-Names.html#Function%20Names">Function Names</a>: Printable strings which are the name of the current function.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Return-Address.html#Return%20Address">Return Address</a>: Getting the return or frame address of a function.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Unnamed-Fields.html#Unnamed%20Fields">Unnamed Fields</a>: Unnamed struct/union fields within structs/unions.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Attribute-Syntax.html#Attribute%20Syntax">Attribute Syntax</a>: Formal syntax for attributes.</li>
- </ol></li>
+<li>LLVM 2.3 includes several compile time speedups for code with large basic
+ blocks, particularly in the instruction selection phase, register
+ allocation, scheduling, and tail merging/jump threading.</li>
+<li>LLVM 2.3 includes several improvements which make llc's
+ <tt>--view-sunit-dags</tt> visualization of scheduling dependency graphs
+ easier to understand.</li>
+
+<li>The code generator allows targets to write patterns that generate subreg
+ references directly in .td files now.</li>
+
+<li><tt>memcpy</tt> lowering in the backend is more aggressive, particularly for
+ <tt>memcpy</tt> calls introduced by the code generator when handling
+ pass-by-value structure argument copies.</li>
+
+<li>Inline assembly with multiple register results now returns those results
+ directly in the appropriate registers, rather than going through memory.
+ Inline assembly that uses constraints like "ir" with immediates now use the
+ 'i' form when possible instead of always loading the value in a register.
+ This saves an instruction and reduces register use.</li>
+
+<li>Added support for PIC/GOT style <a
+ href="CodeGenerator.html#tailcallopt">tail calls</a> on X86/32 and initial
+ support for tail calls on PowerPC 32 (it may also work on PowerPC 64 but is
+ not thoroughly tested).</li>
</ul>
-<p>If you run into GCC extensions which have not been included in any of these
-lists, please let us know (also including whether or not they work).</p>
-
</div>
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
+
+<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
- <a name="c++-fe">Known problems with the C++ front-end</a>
+<a name="x86specific">X86/X86-64 Specific Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
+<p>New target-specific features include:
+</p>
-<p>For this release, the C++ front-end is considered to be fully
-tested and works for a number of non-trivial programs, including LLVM
-itself.</p>
+<ul>
+<li>llvm-gcc's X86-64 ABI conformance is far improved, particularly in the
+ area of passing and returning structures by value. llvm-gcc compiled code
+ now interoperates very well on X86-64 systems with other compilers.</li>
+
+<li>Support for Win64 was added. This includes code generation itself, JIT
+ support, and necessary changes to llvm-gcc.</li>
+
+<li>The LLVM X86 backend now supports the support SSE 4.1 instruction set, and
+ the llvm-gcc 4.2 front-end supports the SSE 4.1 compiler builtins. Various
+ generic vector operations (insert/extract/shuffle) are much more efficient
+ when SSE 4.1 is enabled. The JIT automatically takes advantage of these
+ instructions, but llvm-gcc must be explicitly told to use them, e.g. with
+ <tt>-march=penryn</tt>.</li>
+
+<li>The X86 backend now does a number of optimizations that aim to avoid
+ converting numbers back and forth from SSE registers to the X87 floating
+ point stack. This is important because most X86 ABIs require return values
+ to be on the X87 Floating Point stack, but most CPUs prefer computation in
+ the SSE units.</li>
+
+<li>The X86 backend supports stack realignment, which is particularly useful for
+ vector code on OS's without 16-byte aligned stacks, such as Linux and
+ Windows.</li>
+
+<li>The X86 backend now supports the "sseregparm" options in GCC, which allow
+ functions to be tagged as passing floating point values in SSE
+ registers.</li>
+
+<li>Trampolines (taking the address of a nested function) now work on
+ Linux/X86-64.</li>
+<li><tt>__builtin_prefetch</tt> is now compiled into the appropriate prefetch
+ instructions instead of being ignored.</li>
+
+<li>128-bit integers are now supported on X86-64 targets. This can be used
+ through <tt>__attribute__((TImode))</tt> in llvm-gcc.</li>
+
+<li>The register allocator can now rematerialize PIC-base computations, which is
+ an important optimization for register use.</li>
+
+<li>The "t" and "f" inline assembly constraints for the X87 floating point stack
+ now work. However, the "u" constraint is still not fully supported.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
</div>
-<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection">Bugs</div>
+<!--=========================================================================-->
+<div class="doc_subsection">
+<a name="targetspecific">Other Target Specific Improvements</a>
+</div>
<div class="doc_text">
+<p>New target-specific features include:
+</p>
<ul>
-<li>The C++ front-end inherits all problems afflicting the <a href="#c-fe">C
- front-end</a>.</li>
-
+<li>The LLVM C backend now supports vector code.</li>
+<li>The Cell SPU backend includes a number of improvements. It generates better
+ code and its stability/completeness is improving.</li>
</ul>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<!--=========================================================================-->
+<div class="doc_subsection">
+<a name="otherimprovements">Other Improvements</a>
</div>
-<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection">
- Notes
+<div class="doc_text">
+<p>New features include:
+</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>LLVM now builds with GCC 4.3.</li>
+<li>Bugpoint now supports running custom scripts (with the <tt>-run-custom</tt>
+ option) to determine how to execute the command and whether it is making
+ forward process.</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) running Red Hat Linux, Fedora Core and FreeBSD
+ (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 UltraSPARC workstations running Solaris 10.</li>
+<li>Alpha-based machines running Debian GNU/Linux.</li>
+<li>Itanium-based (IA64) machines running Linux and HP-UX.</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 all known problems with the LLVM system, listed by
+component. As new problems are discovered, they will be added to these
+sections. 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>
+
+</div>
+
+<!-- ======================================================================= -->
+<div class="doc_subsection">
+ <a name="experimental">Experimental features included with this release</a>
+</div>
-<li>Destructors for local objects are not always run when a <tt>longjmp</tt> is
- performed. In particular, destructors for objects in the <tt>longjmp</tt>ing
- function and in the <tt>setjmp</tt> receiver function may not be run.
- Objects in intervening stack frames will be destroyed, however (which is
- better than most compilers).</li>
-
-<li>The LLVM C++ front-end follows the <a
- href="http://www.codesourcery.com/cxx-abi">Itanium C++ ABI</a>.
- This document, which is not Itanium specific, specifies a standard for name
- mangling, class layout, v-table layout, RTTI formats, and other C++
- representation issues. Because we use this API, code generated by the LLVM
- compilers should be binary compatible with machine code generated by other
- Itanium ABI C++ compilers (such as G++, the Intel and HP compilers, etc).
- <i>However</i>, the exception handling mechanism used by LLVM is very
- different from the model used in the Itanium ABI, so <b>exceptions will not
- interact correctly</b>. </li>
+<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, IA64, Alpha, SPU, and MIPS backends are experimental.</li>
+<li>The llc "<tt>-filetype=asm</tt>" (the default) is the only supported
+ value for this option.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
- <a name="c-be">Known problems with the C back-end</a>
+ <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 mingw64 runtime
+ currently due
+ to <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2255">several</a>
+ <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2257">bugs</a> due to lack of support for the
+ 'u' inline assembly constraint and X87 floating point inline assembly.</li>
+ <li>The X86-64 backend does not yet support position-independent code (PIC)
+ generation on Linux targets.</li>
+ <li>The X86-64 backend does not yet support the LLVM IR instruction
+ <tt>va_arg</tt>. Currently, the llvm-gcc front-end supports variadic
+ argument constructs on X86-64 by lowering them manually.</li>
+</ul>
-<li>The C back-end produces code that violates the ANSI C Type-Based Alias
-Analysis rules. As such, special options may be necessary to compile the code
-(for example, GCC requires the <tt>-fno-strict-aliasing</tt> option). This
-problem probably cannot be fixed.</li>
+</div>
-<li><a href="http://llvm.org/PR56">Zero arg vararg functions are not
-supported</a>. This should not affect LLVM produced by the C or C++
-frontends.</li>
+<!-- ======================================================================= -->
+<div class="doc_subsection">
+ <a name="ppc-be">Known problems with the PowerPC back-end</a>
+</div>
-<li>The C backend does not correctly implement the <a
-href="LangRef.html#i_stacksave"><tt>llvm.stacksave</tt></a> or
-<a href="LangRef.html#i_stackrestore"><tt>llvm.stackrestore</tt></a>
-intrinsics. This means that some code compiled by it can run out of stack
-space if they depend on these (e.g. C99 varargs).</li>
+<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="x86-be">Known problems with the X86 back-end</a>
+ <a name="arm-be">Known problems with the ARM back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
-<li>none yet.</li>
+<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>
+<li>There is a bug in QEMU-ARM (<= 0.9.0) which causes it to incorrectly
+ execute
+programs compiled with LLVM. Please use more recent versions of QEMU.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
- <a name="ppc-be">Known problems with the PowerPC back-end</a>
+ <a name="sparc-be">Known problems with the SPARC back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
-<li><a href="http://llvm.org/PR642">PowerPC backend does not correctly
-implement ordered FP comparisons</a>.</li>
+<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>
appropriate nops inserted to ensure restartability.</li>
</ul>
-
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
+<li>The Itanium backend is highly experimental, and has a number of known
+ issues. We are looking for a maintainer for the Itanium backend. If you
+ are interested, please contact the llvmdev mailing list.</li>
+</ul>
-<li>C++ programs are likely to fail on IA64, as calls to <tt>setjmp</tt> are
-made where the argument is not 16-byte aligned, as required on IA64. (Strictly
-speaking this is not a bug in the IA64 back-end; it will also be encountered
-when building C++ programs using the C back-end.)</li>
-
-<li>The C++ front-end does not use <a href="http://llvm.org/PR406">IA64
-ABI compliant layout of v-tables</a>. In particular, it just stores function
-pointers instead of function descriptors in the vtable. This bug prevents
-mixing C++ code compiled with LLVM with C++ objects compiled by other C++
-compilers.</li>
+</div>
-<li>There are a few ABI violations which will lead to problems when mixing LLVM
-output with code built with other compilers, particularly for floating-point
-programs.</li>
+<!-- ======================================================================= -->
+<div class="doc_subsection">
+ <a name="c-be">Known problems with the C back-end</a>
+</div>
-<li>Defining vararg functions is not supported (but calling them is ok).</li>
+<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 llc or native compilers.</li>
+<li>The C backend does not support all exception handling constructs.</li>
</ul>
</div>
+
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
- <a name="sparc-be">Known problems with the SPARC back-end</a>
+ <a name="c-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc C front-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>
+<p>llvm-gcc does not currently support <a href="http://llvm.org/PR869">Link-Time
+Optimization</a> on most platforms "out-of-the-box". Please inquire on the
+llvmdev mailing list if you are interested.</p>
+
+<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="arm-be">Known problems with the ARM back-end</a>
+ <a name="c++-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc C++ front-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
+<p>The C++ front-end is considered to be fully
+tested and works for a number of non-trivial programs, including LLVM
+itself, Qt, Mozilla, etc.</p>
+
<ul>
-<li>The ARM backend is currently in early development stages, it is not
-ready for production use.</li>
+<li>Exception handling works well on the X86 and PowerPC targets, including
+X86-64 darwin. This works when linking to a libstdc++ compiled by GCC. It is
+supported on X86-64 linux, but that is disabled by default in this release.</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>.
+Workaround: configure with --disable-bootstrap.</li>
+<li>The c380004 and <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2010">c393010</a> ACATS tests
+fail (c380004 also fails with gcc-4.2 mainline). When built at -O3, the
+<a href="http://llvm.org/PR2421">cxg2021</a> ACATS test also fails.</li>
+<li>Some gcc specific Ada tests continue to crash the compiler. The testsuite
+reports most tests as having failed even though they pass.</li>
+<li>The -E 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 -E.</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 class="doc_text">
<p>A wide variety of additional information is available on the <a
-href="http://llvm.org">LLVM web page</a>, including <a
-href="http://llvm.org/docs/">documentation</a> and <a
-href="http://llvm.org/pubs/">publications describing algorithms and
-components implemented in LLVM</a>. The web page also contains versions of the
-API documentation which is up-to-date with the CVS version of the source code.
+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>
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+ <a href="http://llvm.org/">LLVM Compiler Infrastructure</a><br>
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