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7 <title>LLVM 2.3 Release Notes</title>
11 <div class="doc_title">LLVM 2.3 Release Notes</div>
14 <li><a href="#intro">Introduction</a></li>
15 <li><a href="#whatsnew">What's New?</a></li>
16 <li><a href="GettingStarted.html">Installation Instructions</a></li>
17 <li><a href="#portability">Portability and Supported Platforms</a></li>
18 <li><a href="#knownproblems">Known Problems</a>
19 <li><a href="#additionalinfo">Additional Information</a></li>
22 <div class="doc_author">
23 <p>Written by the <a href="http://llvm.org">LLVM Team</a><p>
26 <!-- Done through Week-of-Mon-20080324.txt -->
28 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
29 <div class="doc_section">
30 <a name="intro">Introduction</a>
32 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
34 <div class="doc_text">
36 <p>This document contains the release notes for the LLVM compiler
37 infrastructure, release 2.3. Here we describe the status of LLVM, including
38 major improvements from the previous release and any known problems. All LLVM
39 releases may be downloaded from the <a href="http://llvm.org/releases/">LLVM
40 releases web site</a>.</p>
42 <p>For more information about LLVM, including information about the latest
43 release, please check out the <a href="http://llvm.org/">main LLVM
44 web site</a>. If you have questions or comments, the <a
45 href="http://mail.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">LLVM developer's mailing
46 list</a> is a good place to send them.</p>
48 <p>Note that if you are reading this file from a Subversion checkout or the
49 main LLVM web page, this document applies to the <i>next</i> release, not the
50 current one. To see the release notes for a specific releases, please see the
51 <a href="http://llvm.org/releases/">releases page</a>.</p>
55 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
56 <div class="doc_section">
57 <a name="whatsnew">What's New?</a>
59 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
61 <div class="doc_text">
63 <p>This is the fourteenth public release of the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure.
64 It includes a large number of features and refinements from LLVM 2.2.</p>
68 <!-- Unfinished features in 2.3:
74 <!--=========================================================================-->
75 <div class="doc_subsection">
76 <a name="changes">Major Changes in LLVM 2.3</a>
79 <div class="doc_text">
81 <p>LLVM 2.2 was the last LLVM release to support llvm-gcc 4.0 and llvm-upgrade.
82 llvm-gcc 4.0 has been replaced with llvm-gcc 4.2. llvm-upgrade was useful for
83 upgrading LLVM 1.9 files to LLVM 2.x syntax, but you can always use a previous
84 LLVM release to do this. One nice impact of this is that the LLVM regression
85 test suite no longer depends on llvm-upgrade, which makes it run faster.</p>
87 <p>LLVM 2.3 renames the LLVMBuilder and LLVMFoldingBuilder classes to
92 <!--=========================================================================-->
93 <div class="doc_subsection">
94 <a name="majorfeatures">Major New Features</a>
97 <div class="doc_text">
99 <p>LLVM 2.3 includes several major new capabilities:</p>
102 <li>Multiple Return Value Support</li>
105 <li><p>LLVM 2.3 includes a complete reimplementation of the "llvmc" tool. It is
106 designed to overcome several problems of the original llvmc and to provide a
107 superset of the features as the 'gcc' driver.</p>
109 <p>The main features of llvmc2 is:</p>
112 <li>Extended handling of command line options and smart rules for
113 dispatching them to different tools.</li>
114 <li>Flexible (and extensible) rules for defining different tools.</li>
115 <li>The different intermediate steps performed by tools are represented
116 as edges in the abstract graph.</li>
117 <li>The 'language' for driver behaviour definition is tablegen and thus
118 it's relatively easy to add new features.</li>
119 <li>The definition of driver is transformed into set of C++ classes, thus
120 no runtime interpretation is needed.</li>
125 <li>Reimplemented <a href="LinkTimeOptimization.html">LTO interface</a> in
129 <li>kaleidoscope tutorial in ocaml.</li>
136 <!--=========================================================================-->
137 <div class="doc_subsection">
138 <a name="frontends">llvm-gcc 4.2 Improvements and Clang</a>
141 <div class="doc_text">
143 <p>LLVM 2.3 fully supports llvm-gcc 4.2 front-end.</p>
145 <p>llvm-gcc 4.2 includes numerous fixes to better support the Objective-C
146 front-end. Objective-C now works very well on Mac OS/X.</p>
148 <p>llvm-gcc 4.2 includes many other fixes which improve conformance with the
149 relevant parts of the GCC testsuite.</p>
151 <p>The <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/">clang project</a> is an effort to build
152 a set of new 'llvm native' front-end technologies for the LLVM optimizer
153 and code generator. Currently, its C and Objective-C support is maturing
154 nicely, and it has advanced source-to-source analysis and transformation
155 capabilities. If you are interested in building source-level tools for C and
156 Objective-C (and eventually C++), you should take a look. However, note that
157 clang is not an official part of the LLVM 2.3 release. If you are interested in
158 this project, please see its <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/">web site</a>.</p>
163 <!--=========================================================================-->
164 <div class="doc_subsection">
165 <a name="coreimprovements">LLVM Core Improvements</a>
168 <div class="doc_text">
169 <p>New features include:
175 Atomic operation support, Alpha, X86, X86-64, PowerPC. "__sync_synchronize"
178 <li>The C and Ocaml bindings have received additional improvements. The
179 bindings now cover pass managers, several transformation passes, iteration
180 over the LLVM IR, target data, and parameter attribute lists.</li>
185 <!--=========================================================================-->
186 <div class="doc_subsection">
187 <a name="codegen">Code Generator Improvements</a>
190 <div class="doc_text">
192 <p>We put a significant amount of work into the code generator infrastructure,
193 which allows us to implement more aggressive algorithms and make it run
197 <li>MemOperand in the code generator: describe me!.</li>
198 <li>The target-independent code generator infrastructure now uses LLVM's APInt
199 class to handle integer values, which allows it to support integer types
200 larger than 64 bits. Note that support for such types is also dependent on
201 target-specific support. Use of APInt is also a step toward support for
202 non-power-of-2 integer sizes.</li>
203 <li>Several compile time speedups for code with large basic blocks.</li>
204 <li>Several improvements which make llc's <tt>--view-sunit-dags</tt>
205 visualization of scheduling dependency graphs easier to understand.</li>
210 <!--=========================================================================-->
211 <div class="doc_subsection">
212 <a name="optimizer">Optimizer Improvements</a>
215 <div class="doc_text">
217 <p>In addition to a huge array of bug fixes and minor performance tweaks, the
218 LLVM 2.3 optimizers support a few major enhancements:</p>
222 <li>Loop index set splitting on by default.<p>
223 This transformation hoists conditions from loop bodies and reduces loop's
224 iteration space to improve performance. For example, <p>
226 for (i = LB; i < UB; ++i)
233 for (i = LB; i < NUB; ++i)
237 <li>LLVM includes a new <tt>memcpy</tt> optimization pass which optimizes out dead
238 <tt>memcpy</tt> calls, unneeded copies of aggregates, and handles the return slot
239 optimization. The LLVM optimizer now notices long sequences of consequtive
240 stores and merges them into <tt>memcpy</tt>s where profitable.</li>
241 <li>Alignment detection for vector memory references and for <tt>memcpy</tt> and
242 <tt>memset</tt> is now more aggressive.</li>
244 <li>The aggressive dead code elimination (ADCE) optimization has been rewritten to make
245 it both faster and safer in the presence of code containing infinite loops.
246 Some of its prior functionality has been factored out into the loop deletion
247 pass, which <em>is</em> safe for infinite loops.</li>
253 <!--=========================================================================-->
254 <div class="doc_subsection">
255 <a name="x86specific">X86/X86-64 Specific Improvements</a>
258 <div class="doc_text">
259 <p>New target-specific features include:
263 <li>llvm-gcc's X86-64 ABI conformance is far improved, particularly in the
264 area of passing and returning structures by value. llvm-gcc compiled code
265 now interoperates very well on X86-64 systems with other compilers.</li>
267 <li>The LLVM X86 backend now supports the support SSE 4.1 instruction set, and
268 the llvm-gcc 4.2 front-end supports the SSE 4.1 compiler builtins.</li>
270 <li>The X86 backend now does a number of optimizations that aim to avoid
271 converting numbers back and forth from SSE registers to the X87 floating
274 <li>The X86 backend supports stack realignment, which is particularly useful for
275 vector code on OS's without 16-byte aligned stacks.</li>
277 <li>The X86 backend now supports the "sseregparm" options in GCC, which allow
278 functions to be tagged as passing floating point values in SSE
281 <li>Trampolines (taking the address of a nested function) now work on
284 <li><tt>__builtin_prefetch</tt> is now compiled into the appropriate prefetch
285 instructions instead of being ignored.</li>
287 <li>128-bit integers are now supported on x86-64 targets.</li>
293 <!--=========================================================================-->
294 <div class="doc_subsection">
295 <a name="targetspecific">Other Target Specific Improvements</a>
298 <div class="doc_text">
299 <p>New target-specific features include:
303 <li>The LLVM C backend now supports vector code.</li>
312 <!--=========================================================================-->
313 <div class="doc_subsection">
314 <a name="otherimprovements">Other Improvements</a>
317 <div class="doc_text">
318 <p>New features include:
322 <li>LLVM now builds with GCC 4.3.</li>
323 <li>llvm2cpp tool has been folded into llc, use <tt>llc -march=cpp</tt></li>
328 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
329 <div class="doc_section">
330 <a name="portability">Portability and Supported Platforms</a>
332 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
334 <div class="doc_text">
336 <p>LLVM is known to work on the following platforms:</p>
339 <li>Intel and AMD machines (IA32) running Red Hat Linux, Fedora Core and FreeBSD
340 (and probably other unix-like systems).</li>
341 <li>PowerPC and X86-based Mac OS X systems, running 10.3 and above in 32-bit and
343 <li>Intel and AMD machines running on Win32 using MinGW libraries (native).</li>
344 <li>Intel and AMD machines running on Win32 with the Cygwin libraries (limited
345 support is available for native builds with Visual C++).</li>
346 <li>Sun UltraSPARC workstations running Solaris 10.</li>
347 <li>Alpha-based machines running Debian GNU/Linux.</li>
348 <li>Itanium-based (IA64) machines running Linux and HP-UX.</li>
351 <p>The core LLVM infrastructure uses GNU autoconf to adapt itself
352 to the machine and operating system on which it is built. However, minor
353 porting may be required to get LLVM to work on new platforms. We welcome your
354 portability patches and reports of successful builds or error messages.</p>
358 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
359 <div class="doc_section">
360 <a name="knownproblems">Known Problems</a>
362 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
364 <div class="doc_text">
366 <p>This section contains all known problems with the LLVM system, listed by
367 component. As new problems are discovered, they will be added to these
368 sections. If you run into a problem, please check the <a
369 href="http://llvm.org/bugs/">LLVM bug database</a> and submit a bug if
370 there isn't already one.</p>
374 <!-- ======================================================================= -->
375 <div class="doc_subsection">
376 <a name="experimental">Experimental features included with this release</a>
379 <div class="doc_text">
381 <p>The following components of this LLVM release are either untested, known to
382 be broken or unreliable, or are in early development. These components should
383 not be relied on, and bugs should not be filed against them, but they may be
384 useful to some people. In particular, if you would like to work on one of these
385 components, please contact us on the <a
386 href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">LLVMdev list</a>.</p>
389 <li>The MSIL, IA64, Alpha, SPU, and MIPS backends are experimental.</li>
390 <li>The LLC "<tt>-filetype=asm</tt>" (the default) is the only supported
391 value for this option.</li>
396 <!-- ======================================================================= -->
397 <div class="doc_subsection">
398 <a name="x86-be">Known problems with the X86 back-end</a>
401 <div class="doc_text">
404 <li>The X86 backend does not yet support all <a
405 href="http://llvm.org/PR879">inline assembly that uses the X86 floating
406 point stack</a>. It supports the 'f' and 't' constraints, but not 'u'.</li>
407 <li>The X86 backend generates inefficient floating point code when configured to
408 generate code for systems that don't have SSE2.</li>
413 <!-- ======================================================================= -->
414 <div class="doc_subsection">
415 <a name="ppc-be">Known problems with the PowerPC back-end</a>
418 <div class="doc_text">
421 <li>The Linux PPC32/ABI support needs testing for the interpreter and static
422 compilation, and lacks support for debug information.</li>
427 <!-- ======================================================================= -->
428 <div class="doc_subsection">
429 <a name="arm-be">Known problems with the ARM back-end</a>
432 <div class="doc_text">
435 <li>Thumb mode works only on ARMv6 or higher processors. On sub-ARMv6
436 processors, thumb programs can crash or produce wrong
437 results (<a href="http://llvm.org/PR1388">PR1388</a>).</li>
438 <li>Compilation for ARM Linux OABI (old ABI) is supported, but not fully tested.
440 <li>There is a bug in QEMU-ARM (<= 0.9.0) which causes it to incorrectly execute
441 programs compiled with LLVM. Please use more recent versions of QEMU.</li>
446 <!-- ======================================================================= -->
447 <div class="doc_subsection">
448 <a name="sparc-be">Known problems with the SPARC back-end</a>
451 <div class="doc_text">
454 <li>The SPARC backend only supports the 32-bit SPARC ABI (-m32), it does not
455 support the 64-bit SPARC ABI (-m64).</li>
460 <!-- ======================================================================= -->
461 <div class="doc_subsection">
462 <a name="alpha-be">Known problems with the Alpha back-end</a>
465 <div class="doc_text">
469 <li>On 21164s, some rare FP arithmetic sequences which may trap do not have the
470 appropriate nops inserted to ensure restartability.</li>
475 <!-- ======================================================================= -->
476 <div class="doc_subsection">
477 <a name="ia64-be">Known problems with the IA64 back-end</a>
480 <div class="doc_text">
484 <li>C++ programs are likely to fail on IA64, as calls to <tt>setjmp</tt> are
485 made where the argument is not 16-byte aligned, as required on IA64. (Strictly
486 speaking this is not a bug in the IA64 back-end; it will also be encountered
487 when building C++ programs using the C back-end.)</li>
489 <li>The C++ front-end does not use <a href="http://llvm.org/PR406">IA64
490 ABI compliant layout of v-tables</a>. In particular, it just stores function
491 pointers instead of function descriptors in the vtable. This bug prevents
492 mixing C++ code compiled with LLVM with C++ objects compiled by other C++
495 <li>There are a few ABI violations which will lead to problems when mixing LLVM
496 output with code built with other compilers, particularly for floating-point
499 <li>Defining vararg functions is not supported (but calling them is ok).</li>
501 <li>The Itanium backend has bitrotted somewhat.</li>
506 <!-- ======================================================================= -->
507 <div class="doc_subsection">
508 <a name="c-be">Known problems with the C back-end</a>
511 <div class="doc_text">
514 <li><a href="http://llvm.org/PR802">The C backend has only basic support for
515 inline assembly code</a>.</li>
516 <li><a href="http://llvm.org/PR1658">The C backend violates the ABI of common
517 C++ programs</a>, preventing intermixing between C++ compiled by the CBE and
518 C++ code compiled with LLC or native compilers.</li>
519 <li>The C backend does not support all exception handling constructs.</li>
525 <!-- ======================================================================= -->
526 <div class="doc_subsection">
527 <a name="c-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc C front-end</a>
530 <!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
531 <div class="doc_subsubsection">Bugs</div>
533 <div class="doc_text">
535 <p>llvm-gcc does not currently support <a href="http://llvm.org/PR869">Link-Time
536 Optimization</a> on most platforms "out-of-the-box". Please inquire on the
537 llvmdev mailing list if you are interested.</p>
539 <p>The only major language feature of GCC not supported by llvm-gcc is
540 the <tt>__builtin_apply</tt> family of builtins. However, some extensions
541 are only supported on some targets. For example, trampolines are only
542 supported on some targets, which are used when you take the address of a
545 <p>If you run into GCC extensions which are not supported, please let us know.
550 <!-- ======================================================================= -->
551 <div class="doc_subsection">
552 <a name="c++-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc C++ front-end</a>
555 <div class="doc_text">
557 <p>The C++ front-end is considered to be fully
558 tested and works for a number of non-trivial programs, including LLVM
559 itself, Qt, Mozilla, etc.</p>
562 <li>Exception handling works well on the X86 and PowerPC targets, including
563 x86-64 darwin. This works when linking to a libstdc++ compiled by GCC. It is
564 supported on x86-64 linux, but that is disabled by default in this release.</li>
570 <!-- ======================================================================= -->
571 <div class="doc_subsection">
572 <a name="ada-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc Ada front-end</a>
575 <div class="doc_text">
576 The llvm-gcc 4.2 Ada compiler works fairly well, however this is not a mature
577 technology and problems should be expected.
579 <li>The Ada front-end currently only builds on x86-32. This is mainly due
580 to lack of trampoline support (pointers to nested functions) on other platforms,
581 however it <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2006">also fails to build on x86-64</a>
582 which does support trampolines.</li>
583 <li>The Ada front-end <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2007">fails to bootstrap</a>.
584 Workaround: configure with --disable-bootstrap.</li>
585 <li>The c380004 and <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2010">c393010</a> ACATS tests
586 fail (c380004 also fails with gcc-4.2 mainline).</li>
587 <li>Many gcc specific Ada tests continue to crash the compiler.</li>
588 <li>The -E binder option (exception backtraces)
589 <a href="http://llvm.org/PR1982">does not work</a> and will result in programs
590 crashing if an exception is raised. Workaround: do not use -E.</li>
591 <li>Only discrete types <a href="http://llvm.org/PR1981">are allowed to start
592 or finish at a non-byte offset</a> in a record. Workaround: do not pack records
593 or use representation clauses that result in a field of a non-discrete type
594 starting or finishing in the middle of a byte.</li>
595 <li>The <tt>lli</tt> interpreter <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2009">considers 'main'
596 as generated by the Ada binder to be invalid</a>.
597 Workaround: hand edit the file to use pointers for <tt>argv</tt> and <tt>envp</tt> rather than
599 <li>The <tt>-fstack-check</tt> option <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2008">is ignored</a>.</li>
603 <!-- ======================================================================= -->
604 <div class="doc_subsection">
605 <a name="fortran-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc Fortran front-end</a>
608 <div class="doc_text">
611 <li>The llvm-gcc 4.2 gfortran front-end supports a broad range of Fortran code, but does
612 <a href="http://llvm.org/PR1971">not support <tt>EQUIVALENCE</tt> yet</a>.</li>
618 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
619 <div class="doc_section">
620 <a name="additionalinfo">Additional Information</a>
622 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
624 <div class="doc_text">
626 <p>A wide variety of additional information is available on the <a
627 href="http://llvm.org">LLVM web page</a>, in particular in the <a
628 href="http://llvm.org/docs/">documentation</a> section. The web page also
629 contains versions of the API documentation which is up-to-date with the
630 Subversion version of the source code.
631 You can access versions of these documents specific to this release by going
632 into the "<tt>llvm/doc/</tt>" directory in the LLVM tree.</p>
634 <p>If you have any questions or comments about LLVM, please feel free to contact
635 us via the <a href="http://llvm.org/docs/#maillist"> mailing
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