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

Getting Started with the Assembler

In a compiler toolchain, the assembler is the tool that is responsible for taking assembly code in textual format and producing an object file, that is, a binary file that encodes everything there is to know about this assembly code.

The assembler is at the frontier between a compiler backend and the binary tools, and you could argue that implementing one does not fall within the scope of a compiler engineer.

While there is some truth to this, we wanted to give you a glimpse of what it takes to produce object files with the LLVM infrastructure since you already went through the trouble of learning how to describe the encoding of the instructions in Chapter 12. In other words, we wanted to show you how the work you did in Chapter 12 connects to the bigger picture of a full compiler toolchain.

In this chapter, you will learn how to leverage the LLVM infrastructure to build an assembler. More specifically, we will teach you about the following...