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<title>LLVM 2.5 Release Notes</title>
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<body>
<div class="doc_title">LLVM 2.5 Release Notes</div>
<ol>
<li><a href="#intro">Introduction</a></li>
<li><a href="#subproj">Sub-project Status Update</a></li>
<li><a href="#whatsnew">What's New in LLVM?</a></li>
<li><a href="GettingStarted.html">Installation Instructions</a></li>
<li><a href="#portability">Portability and Supported Platforms</a></li>
<li><a href="#knownproblems">Known Problems</a></li>
<li><a href="#additionalinfo">Additional Information</a></li>
</ol>
<div class="doc_author">
<p>Written by the <a href="http://llvm.org">LLVM Team</a></p>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="intro">Introduction</a>
</div>
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<div class="doc_text">
<p>This document contains the release notes for the LLVM Compiler
Infrastructure, release 2.5. Here we describe the status of LLVM, including
major improvements from the previous release and significant known problems.
All LLVM releases may be downloaded from the <a
href="http://llvm.org/releases/">LLVM releases web site</a>.</p>
<p>For more information about LLVM, including information about the latest
release, please check out the <a href="http://llvm.org/">main LLVM
web site</a>. If you have questions or comments, the <a
href="http://mail.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">LLVM Developer's Mailing
List</a> is a good place to send them.</p>
<p>Note that if you are reading this file from a Subversion checkout or the
main LLVM web page, this document applies to the <i>next</i> release, not the
current one. To see the release notes for a specific release, please see the
<a href="http://llvm.org/releases/">releases page</a>.</p>
</div>
<!-- Unfinished features in 2.5:
Machine LICM
Machine Sinking
target-specific intrinsics
gold lto plugin
pre-alloc splitter, strong phi elim
llc -enable-value-prop, propagation of value info (sign/zero ext info) from
one MBB to another
debug info for optimized code
-->
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-->
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<div class="doc_section">
<a name="subproj">Sub-project Status Update</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
The LLVM 2.5 distribution currently consists of code from the core LLVM
repository (which roughly includes the LLVM optimizers, code generators and
supporting tools) and the llvm-gcc repository. In addition to this code, the
LLVM Project includes other sub-projects that are in development. The two which
are the most actively developed are the <a href="#clang">Clang Project</a> and
the <a href="#vmkit">VMKit Project</a>.
</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="clang">Clang: C/C++/Objective-C Frontend Toolkit</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/">Clang project</a> is an effort to build
a set of new 'LLVM native' front-end technologies for the LLVM optimizer
and code generator. While Clang is not included in the LLVM 2.5 release, it
is continuing to make major strides forward in all areas. Its C and Objective-C
parsing and code generation support is now very solid. For example, it is
capable of successfully building many real applications for X86-32 and X86-64,
including the FreeBSD kernel. C++ is also making <a
href="http://clang.llvm.org/cxx_status.html">incredible progress</a>, and work
on templates has recently started.</p>
<p>While Clang is not yet production quality, it is progressing very nicely and
is quite usable for building many C and Objective-C applications. If you are
interested in fast compiles and good diagnostics, we encourage you to try it out
by <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/get_started.html">building from mainline</a>
and reporting any issues you hit to the <a
href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev">Clang front-end mailing
list</a>.</p>
<p>In the LLVM 2.5 time-frame, the Clang team has made many improvements:</p>
<ul>
<li>Clang now has a new driver, which is focused on providing a GCC-compatible
interface.</li>
<li>The X86-64 ABI is now supported.</li>
<li>Precompiled header support is now implemented.</li>
<li>Objective-C support is significantly improved beyond LLVM 2.4, supporting
many features, such as Objective-C Garbage Collection.</li>
<li>Many many bugs are fixed.</li>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="clangsa">Clang Static Analyzer</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The Clang project also includes an early stage static source code analysis
tool for <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/StaticAnalysis.html">automatically
finding bugs</a> in C and Objective-C programs. The tool performs a growing set
of checks to find bugs that occur on a specific path within a program. Examples
of bugs the tool finds include logic errors such as null dereferences,
violations of various API rules, dead code, and potential memory leaks in
Objective-C programs. Since its inception, public feedback on the tool has been
extremely positive, and conservative estimates put the number of real bugs it
has found in industrial-quality software on the order of thousands.</p>
<p>The tool also provides a simple web GUI to inspect potential bugs found by
the tool. While still early in development, the GUI illustrates some of the key
features of Clang: accurate source location information, which is used by the
GUI to highlight specific code expressions that relate to a bug (including those
that span multiple lines); and built-in knowledge of macros, which is used to
perform inline expansion of macros within the GUI itself.</p>
<p>The set of checks performed by the static analyzer is gradually expanding,
and future plans for the tool include full source-level inter-procedural
analysis and deeper checks such as buffer overrun detection. There are many
opportunities to extend and enhance the static analyzer, and anyone interested
in working on this project is encouraged to get involved!</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="vmkit">VMKit: JVM/CLI Virtual Machine Implementation</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
The <a href="http://vmkit.llvm.org/">VMKit project</a> is an implementation of
a JVM and a CLI Virtual Machines (Microsoft .NET is an
implementation of the CLI) using the Just-In-Time compiler of LLVM.</p>
<p>Following LLVM 2.5, VMKit has its first release ? that you can find on its
<a href="http://vmkit.llvm.org/releases/">webpage</a>. The release includes
bug fixes, cleanup and new features. The major changes are:</p>
<ul>
<li>?</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="whatsnew">What's New in LLVM?</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This release includes a huge number of bug fixes, performance tweaks, and
minor improvements. Some of the major improvements and new features are listed
in this section.
</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="majorfeatures">Major New Features</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>LLVM 2.5 includes several major new capabilities:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The code generator now supports arbitrary precision integers.
Types like <tt>i33</tt> have long been valid in the LLVM IR, but previously
could only be used with the interpreter.
Now IR using such types can be compiled to native code on all targets.
All operations are supported if the integer is not bigger than twice the
target machine word size.
Simple operations like loads, stores and shifts by a constant amount are
supported for integers of any size.
</p></li>
<!--
Random stuff:
xcore backend!
fortran on darwin!
.ll parser rewrite.
GCC inliner off.
cmake mature?
x86 backend FS/GS segment address spaces?
nocapture
memdep is faster / more aggressive.
how to write a backend doc docs/WritingAnLLVMBackend.html
fastisel + exception handling
vector widening <3 x float> -> <4 x float>
arm port improvements? arm jit encoding stuff, constant island support?
JIT TLS support on x86
mem2reg now faster on code with huge basic blocks
stack protectors/stack canaries, -fstack-protector, controllable on a
per-function basis with attributes.
shufflevector is generalized to allow different shuffle mask width than its
input vectors.
loop optimizer improves floating point induction variables
llvm/Analysis/DebugInfo.h classes, llvm-gcc and clang and codegen use them.
asmprinters seperate from targets for jits
-->
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="llvm-gcc">llvm-gcc 4.2 Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>LLVM fully supports the llvm-gcc 4.2 front-end, which marries the GCC
front-ends and driver with the LLVM optimizer and code generator. It currently
includes support for the C, C++, Objective-C, Ada, and Fortran front-ends.</p>
<ul>
<li>?</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="coreimprovements">LLVM Core Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>New features include:</p>
<ul>
<li>?</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="optimizer">Optimizer Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>In addition to a huge array of bug fixes and minor performance tweaks, this
release includes a few major enhancements and additions to the optimizers:</p>
<ul>
<li>?</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="codegen">Code Generator Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>We have put a significant amount of work into the code generator infrastructure,
which allows us to implement more aggressive algorithms and make it run
faster:</p>
<ul>
<li>The type legalization logic has been completely rewritten, and is now
more powerful (it supports arbitrary precision integer types for example)
and hopefully more correct.
The type legalizer converts operations on types that are not natively
supported by the target machine into equivalent code sequences that only use
natively supported types.
The old type legalizer is still available and will be used if
<tt>-disable-legalize-types</tt> is passed to <tt>llc</tt>.
</li>
<li>?</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="targetspecific">Target Specific Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>New target-specific features include:
</p>
<ul>
<li>?</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="otherimprovements">Other Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>New features include:
</p>
<ul>
<li>?</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="changes">Major Changes and Removed Features</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>If you're already an LLVM user or developer with out-of-tree changes based
on LLVM 2.4, this section lists some "gotchas" that you may run into upgrading
from the previous release.</p>
<ul>
<li>?</li>
</ul>
<p>In addition, many APIs have changed in this release. Some of the major LLVM
API changes are:</p>
<ul>
<li>?</li>
</ul>
<li>?</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="portability">Portability and Supported Platforms</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>LLVM is known to work on the following platforms:</p>
<ul>
<li>Intel and AMD machines (IA32, X86-64, AMD64, EMT-64) running Red Hat
Linux, Fedora Core and FreeBSD (and probably other unix-like systems).</li>
<li>PowerPC and X86-based Mac OS X systems, running 10.3 and above in 32-bit
and 64-bit modes.</li>
<li>Intel and AMD machines running on Win32 using MinGW libraries (native).</li>
<li>Intel and AMD machines running on Win32 with the Cygwin libraries (limited
support is available for native builds with Visual C++).</li>
<li>Sun UltraSPARC workstations running Solaris 10.</li>
<li>Alpha-based machines running Debian GNU/Linux.</li>
<li>Itanium-based (IA64) machines running Linux and HP-UX.</li>
</ul>
<p>The core LLVM infrastructure uses GNU autoconf to adapt itself
to the machine and operating system on which it is built. However, minor
porting may be required to get LLVM to work on new platforms. We welcome your
portability patches and reports of successful builds or error messages.</p>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="knownproblems">Known Problems</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This section contains significant known problems with the LLVM system,
listed by component. If you run into a problem, please check the <a
href="http://llvm.org/bugs/">LLVM bug database</a> and submit a bug if
there isn't already one.</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="experimental">Experimental features included with this release</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The following components of this LLVM release are either untested, known to
be broken or unreliable, or are in early development. These components should
not be relied on, and bugs should not be filed against them, but they may be
useful to some people. In particular, if you would like to work on one of these
components, please contact us on the <a
href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">LLVMdev list</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li>The MSIL, IA64, Alpha, SPU, MIPS, and PIC16 backends are experimental.</li>
<li>The llc "<tt>-filetype=asm</tt>" (the default) is the only supported
value for this option.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="x86-be">Known problems with the X86 back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>The X86 backend does not yet support
all <a href="http://llvm.org/PR879">inline assembly that uses the X86
floating point stack</a>. It supports the 'f' and 't' constraints, but not
'u'.</li>
<li>The X86 backend generates inefficient floating point code when configured
to generate code for systems that don't have SSE2.</li>
<li>Win64 code generation wasn't widely tested. Everything should work, but we
expect small issues to happen. Also, llvm-gcc cannot build mingw64 runtime
currently due
to <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2255">several</a>
<a href="http://llvm.org/PR2257">bugs</a> due to lack of support for the
'u' inline assembly constraint and X87 floating point inline assembly.</li>
<li>The X86-64 backend does not yet support the LLVM IR instruction
<tt>va_arg</tt>. Currently, the llvm-gcc front-end supports variadic
argument constructs on X86-64 by lowering them manually.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="ppc-be">Known problems with the PowerPC back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>The Linux PPC32/ABI support needs testing for the interpreter and static
compilation, and lacks support for debug information.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="arm-be">Known problems with the ARM back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>Thumb mode works only on ARMv6 or higher processors. On sub-ARMv6
processors, thumb programs can crash or produce wrong
results (<a href="http://llvm.org/PR1388">PR1388</a>).</li>
<li>Compilation for ARM Linux OABI (old ABI) is supported, but not fully tested.
</li>
<li>There is a bug in QEMU-ARM (&lt;= 0.9.0) which causes it to incorrectly
execute
programs compiled with LLVM. Please use more recent versions of QEMU.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="sparc-be">Known problems with the SPARC back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>The SPARC backend only supports the 32-bit SPARC ABI (-m32), it does not
support the 64-bit SPARC ABI (-m64).</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="mips-be">Known problems with the MIPS back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>The O32 ABI is not fully supported.</li>
<li>64-bit MIPS targets are not supported yet.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="alpha-be">Known problems with the Alpha back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>On 21164s, some rare FP arithmetic sequences which may trap do not have the
appropriate nops inserted to ensure restartability.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="ia64-be">Known problems with the IA64 back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>The Itanium backend is highly experimental, and has a number of known
issues. We are looking for a maintainer for the Itanium backend. If you
are interested, please contact the LLVMdev mailing list.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="c-be">Known problems with the C back-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li><a href="http://llvm.org/PR802">The C backend has only basic support for
inline assembly code</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://llvm.org/PR1658">The C backend violates the ABI of common
C++ programs</a>, preventing intermixing between C++ compiled by the CBE and
C++ code compiled with llc or native compilers.</li>
<li>The C backend does not support all exception handling constructs.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="c-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc C front-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>llvm-gcc does not currently support <a href="http://llvm.org/PR869">Link-Time
Optimization</a> on most platforms "out-of-the-box". Please inquire on the
LLVMdev mailing list if you are interested.</p>
<p>The only major language feature of GCC not supported by llvm-gcc is
the <tt>__builtin_apply</tt> family of builtins. However, some extensions
are only supported on some targets. For example, trampolines are only
supported on some targets (these are used when you take the address of a
nested function).</p>
<p>If you run into GCC extensions which are not supported, please let us know.
</p>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="c++-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc C++ front-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The C++ front-end is considered to be fully
tested and works for a number of non-trivial programs, including LLVM
itself, Qt, Mozilla, etc.</p>
<ul>
<li>Exception handling works well on the X86 and PowerPC targets. Currently
only Linux and Darwin targets are supported (both 32 and 64 bit).</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="fortran-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc Fortran front-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li>Fortran support generally works, but there are still several unresolved bugs
in Bugzilla. Please see the tools/gfortran component for details.</li>
<li>The Fortran front-end currently does not build on Darwin (without tweaks)
due to unresolved dependencies on the C front-end.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="ada-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc Ada front-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
The llvm-gcc 4.2 Ada compiler works fairly well, however this is not a mature
technology and problems should be expected.
<ul>
<li>The Ada front-end currently only builds on X86-32. This is mainly due
to lack of trampoline support (pointers to nested functions) on other platforms,
however it <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2006">also fails to build on X86-64</a>
which does support trampolines.</li>
<li>The Ada front-end <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2007">fails to bootstrap</a>.
Workaround: configure with --disable-bootstrap.</li>
<li>The c380004, <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2010">c393010</a>
and <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2421">cxg2021</a> ACATS tests fail
(c380004 also fails with gcc-4.2 mainline).</li>
<li>Some gcc specific Ada tests continue to crash the compiler.</li>
<li>The -E binder option (exception backtraces)
<a href="http://llvm.org/PR1982">does not work</a> and will result in programs
crashing if an exception is raised. Workaround: do not use -E.</li>
<li>Only discrete types <a href="http://llvm.org/PR1981">are allowed to start
or finish at a non-byte offset</a> in a record. Workaround: do not pack records
or use representation clauses that result in a field of a non-discrete type
starting or finishing in the middle of a byte.</li>
<li>The <tt>lli</tt> interpreter <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2009">considers
'main' as generated by the Ada binder to be invalid</a>.
Workaround: hand edit the file to use pointers for <tt>argv</tt> and
<tt>envp</tt> rather than integers.</li>
<li>The <tt>-fstack-check</tt> option <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2008">is
ignored</a>.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="additionalinfo">Additional Information</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>A wide variety of additional information is available on the <a
href="http://llvm.org">LLVM web page</a>, in particular in the <a
href="http://llvm.org/docs/">documentation</a> section. The web page also
contains versions of the API documentation which is up-to-date with the
Subversion version of the source code.
You can access versions of these documents specific to this release by going
into the "<tt>llvm/doc/</tt>" directory in the LLVM tree.</p>
<p>If you have any questions or comments about LLVM, please feel free to contact
us via the <a href="http://llvm.org/docs/#maillist"> mailing
lists</a>.</p>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
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