+.. _prefixdata:
+
+Prefix Data
+-----------
+
+Prefix data is data associated with a function which the code generator
+will emit immediately before the function body. The purpose of this feature
+is to allow frontends to associate language-specific runtime metadata with
+specific functions and make it available through the function pointer while
+still allowing the function pointer to be called. To access the data for a
+given function, a program may bitcast the function pointer to a pointer to
+the constant's type. This implies that the IR symbol points to the start
+of the prefix data.
+
+To maintain the semantics of ordinary function calls, the prefix data must
+have a particular format. Specifically, it must begin with a sequence of
+bytes which decode to a sequence of machine instructions, valid for the
+module's target, which transfer control to the point immediately succeeding
+the prefix data, without performing any other visible action. This allows
+the inliner and other passes to reason about the semantics of the function
+definition without needing to reason about the prefix data. Obviously this
+makes the format of the prefix data highly target dependent.
+
+Prefix data is laid out as if it were an initializer for a global variable
+of the prefix data's type. No padding is automatically placed between the
+prefix data and the function body. If padding is required, it must be part
+of the prefix data.
+
+A trivial example of valid prefix data for the x86 architecture is ``i8 144``,
+which encodes the ``nop`` instruction:
+
+.. code-block:: llvm
+
+ define void @f() prefix i8 144 { ... }
+
+Generally prefix data can be formed by encoding a relative branch instruction
+which skips the metadata, as in this example of valid prefix data for the
+x86_64 architecture, where the first two bytes encode ``jmp .+10``:
+
+.. code-block:: llvm
+
+ %0 = type <{ i8, i8, i8* }>
+
+ define void @f() prefix %0 <{ i8 235, i8 8, i8* @md}> { ... }
+
+A function may have prefix data but no body. This has similar semantics
+to the ``available_externally`` linkage in that the data may be used by the
+optimizers but will not be emitted in the object file.
+