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

Enabling MC-based tools

In this section, you will learn how to connect the assembly syntax and encoding information that you described in the previous sections so that you can use some of the MC-based tools. This section focuses specifically on the llvm-mc command-line tool, which is the LLVM-provided way for developers to test the MC layer of their backend.

For this chapter, we will not enable all the capabilities of the MC layer that you saw in Figure 12.2, instead we focus on enabling three MC components that, put together, enable an assembler-like type of experience, meaning that you will be able to test your assembly code syntax and generate encodings from it. Looking back to Figure 12.2, we will specifically enable the arrows representing the printing, the parsing, and (some of) the assembling. The reason we need all three components is because we want to enable the testing from .s to .o files (that is, the parsing to assembling), but when using the llvm-mc tool, the printing...