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 620 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Languages

C++

Tools

LLVM

Concepts

Programming Language

Author (1):

Quentin Colombet

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Table of Contents (30) Chapters

Preface

1. Part 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. Part 2: 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. Part 3: Introduction to the Backend

14. Getting Started with the Backend

15. Getting Started with the Machine Code Layer

16. The Machine Pass Pipeline

17. Part 4: 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. Part 5: Final Lowering and Optimizations

23. Instruction Scheduling

24. Register Allocation

25. Lowering of the Stack Layout

26. Getting Started with the Assembler

27. Unlock Your Book’s Exclusive Benefits

28. Other Books You May Enjoy

29. Index

Technical requirements

Similar to the other chapters in which we built an LLVM backend, you need to develop directly in the LLVM code base (or a fork of it). As such, you will need the same tools that we presented in Chapter 1.

Additionally, for all the snippets presented in this chapter, you will find the actual implementation in the GitHub repository at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/LLVM-Code-Generation-by-example. We call this repository the companion repository in the remainder of the chapter.

For each change presented in this chapter, we highlight a Git tag that you can use to find the full snippet in the companion repository.

If you are unfamiliar with Git tags, refer to Chapter 9 for a quick explanation of what you can do with them.

Let us start with an overview of how stack lowering works in LLVM.