You're reading from LLVM Code Generation A deep dive into compiler backend development

Product type Paperback

Published in May 2025

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781837637782

Length 608 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Languages

C++

Tools

LLVM

Concepts

Programming Language

Author (1):

Quentin Colombet

View More author details

Table of Contents (29) Chapters

Preface

1. Getting Started with LLVM

2. Building LLVM and Understanding the Directory Structure FREE CHAPTER

3. Contributing to LLVM

4. Compiler Basics and How They Map to LLVM APIs

5. Writing Your First Optimization

6. Dealing with Pass Managers

7. TableGen – LLVM Swiss Army Knife for Modeling

8. Middle-End: LLVM IR to LLVM IR

9. Understanding LLVM IR

10. Survey of the Existing Passes

11. Introducing Target-Specific Constructs

12. Hands-On Debugging LLVM IR Passes

13. Introduction to the Backend

14. Getting Started with the Backend

15. Getting Started with the Machine Code Layer

16. The Machine Pass Pipeline

17. LLVM IR to Machine IR

18. Getting Started with Instruction Selection

19. Instruction Selection: The IR Building Phase

20. Instruction Selection: The Legalization Phase

21. Instruction Selection: The Selection Phase and Beyond

22. Final Lowering and Optimizations

23. Instruction Scheduling

24. Register Allocation

25. Lowering of the Stack Layout

26. Getting Started with the Assembler

27. Other Books You May Enjoy

28. Index

Working with basic structures

In this section, you will learn about the prevalent structures used to represent a program. In other words, whatever you build with the LLVM infrastructure, chances are you will have to manipulate these structures.

Thanks to this knowledge, you will be able to build an intuition of which APIs hold which information and offer which capabilities for manipulating a program. Naturally, this is only the beginning, and you will sharpen your knowledge of the APIs as you progress through the book.

This introduction will help you get started with the LLVM code base and give you a thread to follow when starting to explore LLVM APIs on your own.

We follow a top-down approach. We start from the constructs with the largest logical scope and then progressively zoom in on concepts with narrower scopes. What this means is that when you see a concept not defined yet, it will be presented in the following section.