Getting Started with the Backend
As you discovered in Chapter 3, the low-level concepts used by the target independent LLVM code generator are expressed in an intermediate representation (IR) called Machine IR.
In this chapter, you’ll deepen your understanding of this IR by learning about the following topics:
- How to interpret its textual representation
- Which APIs to use beyond the ones you already know
- How to implement the key pieces you need to get started with the code generation, or codegen, part of your backend to work at this level of IR
- Which tools to use to interact with it
To get you started on the right foot, let’s review what you need for this chapter.
