<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="llvm.css" type="text/css">
- <title>LLVM 2.4 Release Notes</title>
+ <title>LLVM 2.5 Release Notes</title>
</head>
<body>
-<div class="doc_title">LLVM 2.4 Release Notes</div>
+<div class="doc_title">LLVM 2.5 Release Notes</div>
<ol>
<li><a href="#intro">Introduction</a></li>
<li><a href="#whatsnew">What's New in LLVM?</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><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>
+ <p>Written by the <a href="http://llvm.org">LLVM Team</a></p>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This document contains the release notes for the LLVM Compiler
-Infrastructure, release 2.4. Here we describe the status of LLVM, including
+Infrastructure, release 2.5. 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>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
+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>
-<!-- Unfinished features in 2.4:
+<!-- Unfinished features in 2.5:
Machine LICM
Machine Sinking
- LegalizeDAGTypes
+ target-specific intrinsics
+ gold lto plugin
+ pre-alloc splitter, strong phi elim
llc -enable-value-prop, propagation of value info (sign/zero ext info) from
one MBB to another
+ debug info for optimized code
+
-->
<!-- for announcement email:
- mention dev mtg
- Xcode 3.1 and 3.1.1.
- -->
+ -->
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
-The LLVM 2.4 distribution currently consists of code from the core LLVM
+The LLVM 2.5 distribution currently consists of code from the core LLVM
repository (which roughly includes the LLVM optimizers, 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 <a href="#clang">Clang Project</a> and
-the <a href="#vmkit">vmkit Project</a>.
+the <a href="#vmkit">VMKit Project</a>.
</p>
</div>
<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>Codegen progress/state
-</p>
+and code generator. While Clang is not included in the LLVM 2.5 release, it
+is continuing to make major strides forward in all areas. Its C and Objective-C
+parsing and code generation support is now very solid. For example, it is
+capable of successfully building many real applications for X86-32 and X86-64,
+including the FreeBSD kernel. C++ is also making <a
+href="http://clang.llvm.org/cxx_status.html">incredible progress</a>, and work
+on templates has recently started.</p>
+
+<p>While Clang is not yet production quality, it is progressing very nicely and
+is quite usable for building many C and Objective-C applications. If you are
+interested in fast compiles and good diagnostics, we encourage you to try it out
+by <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/get_started.html">building from mainline</a>
+and reporting any issues you hit to the <a
+href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev">Clang front-end mailing
+list</a>.</p>
+
+<p>In the LLVM 2.5 time-frame, the Clang team has made many improvements:</p>
+<ul>
+<li>Clang now has a new driver, which is focused on providing a GCC-compatible
+ interface.</li>
+<li>The X86-64 ABI is now supported.</li>
+<li>Precompiled header support is now implemented.</li>
+<li>Objective-C support is significantly improved beyond LLVM 2.4, supporting
+ many features, such as Objective-C Garbage Collection.</li>
+<li>Many many bugs are fixed.</li>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>The
-<a href="http://clang.llvm.org/StaticAnalysis.html">static analysis tool</a>
-.</p>
+<p>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 a growing set
+of checks to find bugs that occur on a specific path within a program. Examples
+of bugs the tool finds include logic errors such as null dereferences,
+violations of various API rules, dead code, and potential memory leaks in
+Objective-C programs. Since its inception, public feedback on the tool has been
+extremely positive, and conservative estimates put the number of real bugs it
+has found in industrial-quality software on the order of thousands.</p>
+
+<p>The tool also provides a simple web GUI to inspect potential bugs found by
+the tool. While still early in development, the GUI illustrates some of the key
+features of Clang: accurate source location information, which is used by the
+GUI to highlight specific code expressions that relate to a bug (including those
+that span multiple lines); and built-in knowledge of macros, which is used to
+perform inline expansion of macros within the GUI itself.</p>
+
+<p>The set of checks performed by the static analyzer is gradually expanding,
+and future plans for the tool include full source-level inter-procedural
+analysis and deeper checks such as buffer overrun detection. There are many
+opportunities to extend and enhance the static analyzer, and anyone interested
+in working on this project is encouraged to get involved!</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
-<a name="vmkit">vmkit: JVM/CLI Virtual Machine Implementation</a>
+<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
+The <a href="http://vmkit.llvm.org/">VMKit project</a> 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>...</p>
+<p>Following LLVM 2.5, VMKit has its first release ? that you can find on its
+<a href="http://vmkit.llvm.org/releases/">webpage</a>. The release includes
+bug fixes, cleanup and new features. The major changes are:</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li>?</li>
+</ul>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>This release includes a huge number of bug fixes, performance tweaks and
+<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>
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>LLVM 2.4 includes several major new capabilities:</p>
+<p>LLVM 2.5 includes several major new capabilities:</p>
<ul>
-<li><p>The most visible end-user change in LLVM 2.4 is that it includes many
-optimizations and changes ot make -O0 compile times much faster. You should see
-improvements on the order of 30% or more faster than LLVM 2.3. There are many
-pieces to this change, described in more detail below. The speedups and new
-components can also be used for JIT compilers that want fast compilation as
-well.</p></li>
-
-<li><p>The biggest change to the LLVM IR is that Multiple Return Values (which
-were introduced in LLVM 2.3) have been generalized to full support for "First
-Class Aggregate" values in LLVM 2.4. This means that LLVM IR supports using
-structs and arrays as values in a function. This capability is mostly useful
-for front-end authors, who prefer to treat things like complex numbers, simple
-tuples, dope vectors, etc as Value*'s instead of as a tuple of Value*'s or as
-memory values.</p></li>
-
-<li><p>LLVM 2.4 also includes an initial port for the PIC16 microprocessor. This
-is the LLVM targer that only has support for 8 bit registers, and a number of
-other crazy constraints. While the port is still in early development stages,
-it shows some interesting things you can do with LLVM.</p></li>
+<li><p>The code generator now supports arbitrary precision integers.
+Types like <tt>i33</tt> have long been valid in the LLVM IR, but previously
+could only be used with the interpreter.
+Now IR using such types can be compiled to native code on all targets.
+All operations are supported if the integer is not bigger than twice the
+target machine word size.
+Simple operations like loads, stores and shifts by a constant amount are
+supported for integers of any size.
+</p></li>
+
+<!--
+Random stuff:
+
+xcore backend!
+fortran on darwin!
+
+.ll parser rewrite.
+GCC inliner off.
+cmake mature?
+x86 backend FS/GS segment address spaces?
+nocapture
+memdep is faster / more aggressive.
+how to write a backend doc docs/WritingAnLLVMBackend.html
+fastisel + exception handling
+vector widening <3 x float> -> <4 x float>
+arm port improvements? arm jit encoding stuff, constant island support?
+JIT TLS support on x86
+mem2reg now faster on code with huge basic blocks
+stack protectors/stack canaries, -fstack-protector, controllable on a
+ per-function basis with attributes.
+shufflevector is generalized to allow different shuffle mask width than its
+ input vectors.
+loop optimizer improves floating point induction variables
+llvm/Analysis/DebugInfo.h classes, llvm-gcc and clang and codegen use them.
+asmprinters seperate from targets for jits
+-->
</ul>
includes support for the C, C++, Objective-C, Ada, and Fortran front-ends.</p>
<ul>
-<li>LLVM 2.4 supports the full set of atomic __sync builtins. LLVM 2.3 only
-supported those used by OpenMP, but 2.4 supports them all. Not all targets
-support all builtins, but X86 and PowerPC do.</li>
-
-<li>llvm-gcc now supports an -flimited-precision option, which tells the
-compiler that it is ok to use low-precision approximations of certain libm
-functions (like tan, log, etc). This allows you to get high performance if you
-only need (say) 14-bits of precision.</li>
-
-<li>llvm-gcc now supports a C language extension known as "<a
-href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/cfe-dev/2008-August/002670.html">Blocks
-</a>. This feature is similar to nested functions and closures, but does not
-require stack trampolines (with most ABIs) and supports returning closures
-from functions that define them. Note that actually <em>using</em> Blocks
-requires a small runtime that is not included with llvm-gcc.</li>
-
-<li>llvm-gcc now supports a new <tt>-flto</tt> option. On systems that support
-transparent Link Time Optimization (currently Darwin systems with Xcode 3.1 and
-later) this allows the use of LTO with other optimization levels like -Os.
-Previously, LTO could only be used with -O4, which implied optimizations in
--O3 that can increase code size.</li>
+<li>?</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>New features include:
-</p>
+<p>New features include:</p>
<ul>
-<li>vector shifts in the IR: no codegen support yet</li>
-<li>use diet patch landed: saved 15% IR memory footprint</li>
-<li>LLVM IR now directly represents "common" linkage, instead of
- representing it as a form of weak linkage.</li>
-<li>DebugInfoBuilder</li>
-<li>.ll printing format change: %3 = add i32 4, 2</li>
-<li>opt-size, noinline, alwaysinline function attributes</li>
-<li>Attrs: function, return, param.</p></li>
-<li>...</li>
+<li>?</li>
+
</ul>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>In addition to a huge array of bug fixes and minor performance tweaks, the
-LLVM 2.4 optimizers support a few major enhancements:</p>
+<p>In addition to a huge array of bug fixes and minor performance tweaks, this
+release includes a few major enhancements and additions to the optimizers:</p>
<ul>
-<li>GVN now does local PRE?</li>
-
-<li>Matthijs' Dead argument elimination rewrite</li>
-
-<li>Old-ADCE used control dependence and deleted output-free infinite loops.
-Added a new Loop deletion pass (for deleting output free provably-finite loops)
-and rewrote ADCE to be simpler faster, and not need control dependence.</li>
-
-<li>SparsePropagation framework for lattice-based dataflow solvers.</li>
-
-<li>Tail duplication was removed from the standard optimizer sequence.</li>
+<li>?</li>
-<li>Various helper functions (ComputeMaskedBits, ComputeNumSignBits, etc) were
-pulled out of instcombine and put into a new ValueTracking.h file, where they
-can be reused by other passes.</li>
-
-<li>The new AddReadAttrs pass works out which functions are read-only or
-read-none (these correspond to 'pure' and 'const' in C) and marks them
-with the appropriate attribute.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>We put a significant amount of work into the code generator infrastructure,
+<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>asm writers split out to their own library to avoid JITs having to link
- them in.</li>
-<li>Big asm writer refactoring + TargetAsmInfo</li>
-<li>2-addr pass and coalescer can now remat trivial insts to avoid a copy.</li>
-<li>spiller to commute instructions in order to fold a reload</li>
-<li>Stack slot coloring?</li>
-<li>Live intervals renumbering? Is this useful to external people?</li>
-<li>'is as cheap as a move' instruction flag</li>
-<li>Improvements to selection dag viewing</li>
-<li>fast isel</li>
-<li>Selection dag speedups</li>
-<li>asmwriter + raw_ostream -> fastah</li>
-<li>Partitioned Boolean Quadratic Programming (PBQP) based register
-allocator.</li>
-<li>...</li>
+<li>The type legalization logic has been completely rewritten, and is now
+more powerful (it supports arbitrary precision integer types for example)
+and hopefully more correct.
+The type legalizer converts operations on types that are not natively
+supported by the target machine into equivalent code sequences that only use
+natively supported types.
+The old type legalizer is still available and will be used if
+<tt>-disable-legalize-types</tt> is passed to <tt>llc</tt>.
+</li>
+<li>?</li>
</ul>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
-<a name="x86specific">X86/X86-64 Specific Improvements</a>
+<a name="targetspecific">Target Specific Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
</p>
<ul>
-<li>Exception handling is supported by default on Linux/x86-64.</li>
-<li>Position Independent Code (PIC) is now supported on Linux/x86-64.</li>
-<li>...</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-</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>MIPS floating point support?</li>
-<li>PowerPC now supports trampolines.</li>
-<li>....</li>
+<li>?</li>
</ul>
</div>
</p>
<ul>
-<li><tt>llvmc2</tt> (the generic compiler driver) gained plugin
- support. It is now easier to experiment with <tt>llvmc2</tt> and
- build your own tools based on it. </li>
-<li>raw_ostream + formatting</li>
-<li>Recycler + pool allocation stuff?</li>
-<li>...</li>
+<li>?</li>
+
</ul>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>If you're already an LLVM user, this section lists some "gotchas" that you
-may run into upgrading from the previous release.</p>
+<p>If you're already an LLVM user or developer with out-of-tree changes based
+on LLVM 2.4, this section lists some "gotchas" that you may run into upgrading
+from the previous release.</p>
-<p>The LLVM IR generated by llvm-gcc no longer names all instructions.
- Use the instnamer pass if you want everything named.</p>
+<ul>
-<li>The LoadVN and GCSE passes have been removed.</li>
+<li>?</li>
+</ul>
-<p>LLVM API Changes:</p>
+<p>In addition, many APIs have changed in this release. Some of the major LLVM
+API changes are:</p>
<ul>
+<li>?</li>
+</ul>
-<li>... Attributes changes ... </li>
-
-<li>The <tt>DbgStopPointInst</tt> methods <tt>getDirectory</tt> and
-<tt>getFileName</tt> now return <tt>Value*</tt> instead of strings. These can be
-converted to strings using <tt>llvm::GetConstantStringInfo</tt> defined via
-"llvm/Analysis/ValueTracking.h".</li>
-
-<li>API change: BinaryOperator::create -> Create (CmpInst, CastInst too)</li>
-<li>Various header files like "llvm/ADT/iterator" were given a .h suffix.
- Change your code to #include "llvm/ADT/iterator.h" instead.</li>
-
+<li>?</li>
</ul>
</div>
<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 (IA32, X86-64, AMD64, EMT-64) 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>
<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
+<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>
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 MSIL, IA64, Alpha, SPU, MIPS, and PIC16 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="mips-be">Known problems with the MIPS back-end</a>
+</div>
+
+<div class="doc_text">
+
+<ul>
+<li>The O32 ABI is not fully supported.</li>
+<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>
<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>
+ are interested, please contact the LLVMdev mailing list.</li>
</ul>
</div>
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>
+<li>The C backend does not support arbitrary precision integers.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<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>
+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
<ul>
<li>Exception handling works well on the X86 and PowerPC targets. Currently
- only linux and darwin targets are supported (both 32 and 64 bit).</li>
+ only Linux and Darwin targets are supported (both 32 and 64 bit).</li>
</ul>
</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 Bugzilla. Please see the tools/gfortran component for details.</li>
+
+<li>The Fortran front-end currently does not build on Darwin (without tweaks)
+ due to unresolved dependencies on the C front-end.</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
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 --disable-bootstrap.</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).</li>
+(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 -E binder option (exception backtraces)
<a href="http://llvm.org/PR1982">does not work</a> and will result in programs
<hr>
<address>
<a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer"><img
- src="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/images/vcss" alt="Valid CSS!"></a>
+ src="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/images/vcss-blue" alt="Valid CSS"></a>
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+ src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-html401-blue" alt="Valid HTML 4.01"></a>
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