<li><a href="#starting">Getting Started with LLVM</a>
<ol>
<li><a href="#terminology">Terminology and Notation</a>
- <li><a href="#unpack">Unpacking the LLVM Archives</a>
- <li><a href="#checkout">Checkout LLVM from CVS</a>
<li><a href="#objfiles">The Location of LLVM Object Files</a>
</ol></li>
<div class="doc_author">
<p>Written by:
- <a href="mailto:jeffc@jolt-lang.org">Jeff Cohen</a>,
+ <a href="mailto:jeffc@jolt-lang.org">Jeff Cohen</a>
</p>
</div>
<p>The Visual Studio port at this time is experimental. It is suitable for
use only if you are writing your own compiler front end or otherwise have a
need to dynamically generate machine code. The JIT and interpreter are
- functional, but it is currently not possible to directly generate an
- executable file. You can do so indirectly by using the C back end.</p>
-
- <p>To emphasize, there is no C/C++ front end currently available. llvm-gcc
- is based on GCC, which cannot be bootstrapped using VC++. Eventually there
- should be a llvm-gcc based on Cygwin or Mingw that is usable. There is also
- the option of generating bytecode files on Unix and copying them over to
- Windows. But be aware the odds of linking C++ code compiled with llvm-gcc
- with code compiled with VC++ is essentially zero.</p>
+ functional, but it is currently not possible to generate assembly code which
+ is then assembled into an executable. You can indirectly create executables
+ by using the C back end.</p>
+
+ <p>To emphasize, there is no C/C++ front end currently available.
+ <tt>llvm-gcc</tt> is based on GCC, which cannot be bootstrapped using VC++.
+ Eventually there should be a <tt>llvm-gcc</tt> based on Cygwin or MinGW that
+ is usable. There is also the option of generating bitcode files on Unix and
+ copying them over to Windows. But be aware the odds of linking C++ code
+ compiled with <tt>llvm-gcc</tt> with code compiled with VC++ is essentially
+ zero.</p>
<p>The LLVM test suite cannot be run on the Visual Studio port at this
time.</p>
- <p>Most of the tools build and work. <tt>llvm-db</tt> does not build at this
- time. <tt>bugpoint</tt> does build, but does not work.
+ <p>Most of the tools build and work. <tt>bugpoint</tt> does build, but does
+ not work. The other tools 'should' work, but have not been fully tested.</p>
<p>Additional information about the LLVM directory structure and tool chain
can be found on the main <a href="GettingStarted.html">Getting Started</a>
- page.</P>
+ page.</p>
</div>
<ol>
<li>Read the documentation.</li>
- <li>Read the documentation.</li>
+ <li>Seriously, read the documentation.</li>
<li>Remember that you were warned twice about reading the documentation.</li>
<li>Get the Source Code
<ol>
<li><tt>cd <i>where-you-want-llvm-to-live</i></tt>
<li><tt>gunzip --stdout llvm-<i>version</i>.tar.gz | tar -xvf -</tt>
- <i>or use WinZip</i>
+ <i> or use WinZip</i>
<li><tt>cd llvm</tt></li>
</ol></li>
- <li>With anonymous CVS access (or use a <a href="#mirror">mirror</a>):
+ <li>With anonymous Subversion access:
<ol>
<li><tt>cd <i>where-you-want-llvm-to-live</i></tt></li>
- <li><tt>cvs -d
- :pserver:anon@llvm-cvs.cs.uiuc.edu:/var/cvs/llvm login</tt></li>
- <li>Hit the return key when prompted for the password.
- <li><tt>cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anon@llvm-cvs.cs.uiuc.edu:/var/cvs/llvm
- co llvm</tt></li>
+ <li><tt>svn co http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/llvm-top/trunk llvm-top
+ </tt></li>
+ <li><tt>make checkout MODULE=llvm</tt>
<li><tt>cd llvm</tt></li>
- <li><tt>cvs up -P -d</tt></li>
</ol></li>
</ul></li>
+
+ <li> Use <a href="http://www.cmake.org/">CMake</a> to generate up-to-date
+ project files:
+ <ul><li>This step is currently optional as LLVM does still come with a
+ normal Visual Studio solution file, but it is not always kept up-to-date
+ and will soon be deprecated in favor of the multi-platform generator
+ CMake.</li>
+ <li>If CMake is installed then the most simple way is to just start the
+ CMake GUI, select the directory where you have LLVM extracted to, and
+ the default options should all be fine. The one option you may really
+ want to change, regardless of anything else, might be the
+ CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX setting to select a directory to INSTALL to once
+ compiling is complete.</li>
+ <li>If you use CMake to generate the Visual Studio solution and project
+ files, then the Solution will have a few extra options compared to the
+ current included one. The projects may still be built individually, but
+ to build them all do not just select all of them in batch build (as some
+ are meant as configuration projects), but rather select and build just
+ the ALL_BUILD project to build everything, or the INSTALL project, which
+ first builds the ALL_BUILD project, then installs the LLVM headers, libs,
+ and other useful things to the directory set by the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
+ setting when you first configured CMake.</li>
+ </ul>
+ </li>
<li>Start Visual Studio
- <ol>
- <li>Simply double click on the solution file <tt>llvm/win32/llvm.sln</tt>.
- </li>
- </ol></li>
+ <ul>
+ <li>If you did not use CMake, then simply double click on the solution
+ file <tt>llvm/win32/llvm.sln</tt>.</li>
+ <li>If you used CMake, then the directory you created the project files,
+ the root directory will have an <tt>llvm.sln</tt> file, just
+ double-click on that to open Visual Studio.</li>
+ </ul></li>
<li>Build the LLVM Suite:
- <ol>
+ <ul>
<li>Simply build the solution.</li>
<li>The Fibonacci project is a sample program that uses the JIT. Modify
the project's debugging properties to provide a numeric command line
argument. The program will print the corresponding fibonacci value.</li>
- </ol></li>
+ </ul></li>
</ol>
+<p>It is strongly encouraged that you get the latest version from Subversion as
+changes are continually making the VS support better.</p>
+
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
- <p>Any system that can adequately run Visual Studio .NET 2003 is fine. The
- LLVM source tree and object files, libraries and executables will consume
+ <p>Any system that can adequately run Visual Studio .NET 2005 SP1 is fine.
+ The LLVM source tree and object files, libraries and executables will consume
approximately 3GB.</p>
</div>
<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="software"><b>Software</b></a></div>
<div class="doc_text">
- <p>You will need Visual Studio .NET 2003. Earlier versions cannot open the
- solution/project files. The VS 2005 beta can, but will migrate these files
- to its own format in the process. While it should work with the VS 2005
- beta, there are no guarantees and there is no support for it at this time.</p>
+ <p>You will need Visual Studio .NET 2005 SP1 or higher. The VS2005 SP1
+ beta and the normal VS2005 still have bugs that are not completely
+ compatible. VS2003 would work except (at last check) it has a bug with
+ friend classes that you can work-around with some minor code rewriting
+ (and please submit a patch if you do). Earlier versions of Visual Studio
+ do not support the C++ standard well enough and will not work.</p>
+
+ <p>You will also need the <a href="http://www.cmake.org/">CMake</a> build
+ system since it generates the project files you will use to build with.</p>
- <p>You will also need several open source packages: bison, flex, and sed.
- These must be installed in <tt>llvm/win32/tools</tt>. These can be found at
- <a href="http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/">http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/
- </a>. Bison prefers that m4 be in the path. You must add it to the Visual
- Studio configuration under the menu Options -> Projects -> VC++
- Directories. Alternatively, you can set the environment variable <tt>M4</tt>
- to point to <tt>m4</tt> executable.</p>
+ <p>
+ Do not install the LLVM directory tree into a path containing spaces (e.g.
+ C:\Documents and Settings\...) as the configure step will fail.</p>
</div>
All these paths are absolute:</p>
<dl>
- <dt>SRC_ROOT
- <dd>
- This is the top level directory of the LLVM source tree.
- <p>
-
- <dt>OBJ_ROOT
- <dd>
- This is the top level directory of the LLVM object tree (i.e. the
- tree where object files and compiled programs will be placed. It
- is fixed at SRC_ROOT/win32).
- <p>
-</dl>
-
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection">
- <a name="unpack">Unpacking the LLVM Archives</a>
-</div>
-
-<div class="doc_text">
-
-<p>
-If you have the LLVM distribution, you will need to unpack it before you
-can begin to compile it. LLVM is distributed as a set of two files: the LLVM
-suite and the LLVM GCC front end compiled for your platform. There is an
-additional test suite that is optional. Each file is a TAR archive that is
-compressed with the gzip program. The WinZip program can also unpack this
-archive. Only the LLVM suite is usable with Visual Studio.
-</p>
+ <dt>SRC_ROOT</dt>
+ <dd><p>This is the top level directory of the LLVM source tree.</p></dd>
-<p> The files are as follows:
-<dl>
- <dt><tt>llvm-1.4.tar.gz</tt></dt>
- <dd>This is the source code for the LLVM libraries and tools.<br/></dd>
+ <dt>OBJ_ROOT</dt>
+ <dd><p>This is the top level directory of the LLVM object tree (i.e. the
+ tree where object files and compiled programs will be placed. It is
+ fixed at SRC_ROOT/win32).</p></dd>
</dl>
</div>
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection">
- <a name="checkout">Checkout LLVM from CVS</a>
-</div>
-
-<div class="doc_text">
-
-<p>If you have access to our CVS repository, you can get a fresh copy of
-the entire source code. Note that significant progress has been made on the
-Visual Studio port since 1.4 was released. All you need to do is check it out
-from CVS as follows:</p>
-
-<ul>
-<li><tt>cd <i>where-you-want-llvm-to-live</i></tt>
- <li><tt>cvs -d :pserver:anon@llvm-cvs.cs.uiuc.edu:/var/cvs/llvm login</tt>
- <li>Hit the return key when prompted for the password.
- <li><tt>cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anon@llvm-cvs.cs.uiuc.edu:/var/cvs/llvm co
- llvm</tt>
-</ul>
-
-<p>This will create an '<tt>llvm</tt>' directory in the current
-directory and fully populate it with the LLVM source code, Makefiles,
-test directories, and local copies of documentation files.</p>
-
-<p>If you want to get a specific release (as opposed to the most recent
-revision), you can specify a label. The following releases have the following
-label:</p>
-
-<ul>
-<li>Release 1.4: <b>RELEASE_14</b></li>
-<li>Release 1.3: <b>RELEASE_13</b></li>
-<li>Release 1.2: <b>RELEASE_12</b></li>
-<li>Release 1.1: <b>RELEASE_11</b></li>
-<li>Release 1.0: <b>RELEASE_1</b></li>
-</ul>
-
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection">
- <a name="mirrors">LLVM CVS Mirrors</a>
-</div>
-
-<div class="doc_text">
-
-<p>If the main CVS server is overloaded or inaccessible, you can try one of
-these user-hosted mirrors:</p>
-
-<ul>
-<li><a href="http://llvm.x10sys.com/">Mirror hosted by eXtensible Systems
-Inc.</a></li>
-</ul>
-</div>
-
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="objfiles">The Location of LLVM Object Files</a>
<p>The object files are placed under <tt>OBJ_ROOT/Debug</tt> for debug builds
and <tt>OBJ_ROOT/Release</tt> for release (optimized) builds. These include
- both executables and libararies that your application can link against.
+ both executables and libararies that your application can link against.</p>
<p>The files that <tt>configure</tt> would create when building on Unix are
created by the <tt>Configure</tt> project and placed in
<tt>OBJ_ROOT/llvm</tt>. You application must have OBJ_ROOT in its include
- search path just before <tt>SRC_ROOT/include</tt>.
+ search path just before <tt>SRC_ROOT/include</tt>.</p>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ol>
- <li>First, create a simple C file, name it 'hello.c':
- <pre>
- #include <stdio.h>
- int main() {
- printf("hello world\n");
- return 0;
- }
- </pre></li>
-
- <li><p>Next, compile the C file into a LLVM bytecode file:</p>
- <p><tt>% llvm-gcc hello.c -o hello</tt></p>
-
- <p>Note that you should have already built the tools and they have to be
- in your path, at least <tt>gccas</tt> and <tt>gccld</tt>.</p>
-
- <p>This will create two result files: <tt>hello</tt> and
- <tt>hello.bc</tt>. The <tt>hello.bc</tt> is the LLVM bytecode that
- corresponds the the compiled program and the library facilities that it
- required. <tt>hello</tt> is a simple shell script that runs the bytecode
- file with <tt>lli</tt>, making the result directly executable. Note that
- all LLVM optimizations are enabled by default, so there is no need for a
- "-O3" switch.</p>
+ <li><p>First, create a simple C file, name it 'hello.c':</p>
+
+<div class="doc_code">
+<pre>
+#include <stdio.h>
+int main() {
+ printf("hello world\n");
+ return 0;
+}
+</pre></div></li>
+
+ <li><p>Next, compile the C file into a LLVM bitcode file:</p>
+
+<div class="doc_code">
+<pre>
+% llvm-gcc -c hello.c -emit-llvm -o hello.bc
+</pre>
+</div>
+
+ <p>This will create the result file <tt>hello.bc</tt> which is the LLVM
+ bitcode that corresponds the the compiled program and the library
+ facilities that it required. You can execute this file directly using
+ <tt>lli</tt> tool, compile it to native assembly with the <tt>llc</tt>,
+ optimize or analyze it further with the <tt>opt</tt> tool, etc.</p>
<p><b>Note: while you cannot do this step on Windows, you can do it on a
- Unix system and transfer <tt>hello.bc</tt> to Windows.</b></p></li>
+ Unix system and transfer <tt>hello.bc</tt> to Windows. Important:
+ transfer as a binary file!</b></p></li>
- <li><p>Run the program. To make sure the program ran, execute the
- following command:</p>
+ <li><p>Run the program using the just-in-time compiler:</p>
- <p><tt>% lli hello.bc</tt></p></li>
+<div class="doc_code">
+<pre>
+% lli hello.bc
+</pre>
+</div>
+
+ <p>Note: this will only work for trivial C programs. Non-trivial programs
+ (and any C++ program) will have dependencies on the GCC runtime that
+ won't be satisfied by the Microsoft runtime libraries.</p></li>
<li><p>Use the <tt>llvm-dis</tt> utility to take a look at the LLVM assembly
code:</p>
- <p><tt>% llvm-dis < hello.bc | less</tt><p></li>
+<div class="doc_code">
+<pre>
+% llvm-dis < hello.bc | more
+</pre>
+</div></li>
+
+ <li><p>Compile the program to C using the LLC code generator:</p>
- <li><p>Compile the program to native assembly using the LLC code
- generator:</p>
+<div class="doc_code">
+<pre>
+% llc -march=c hello.bc
+</pre>
+</div></li>
- <p><tt>% llc hello.bc -o hello.s</tt></p>
+ <li><p>Compile to binary using Microsoft C:</p>
- <li><p>Assemble the native assembly language file into a program:</p>
+<div class="doc_code">
+<pre>
+% cl hello.cbe.c
+</pre>
+</div>
- <p><b>Not currently possible, but eventually will use <tt>NASMW</tt>.</b></p>
+ <p>Note: this will only work for trivial C programs. Non-trivial programs
+ (and any C++ program) will have dependencies on the GCC runtime that won't
+ be satisfied by the Microsoft runtime libraries.</p></li>
<li><p>Execute the native code program:</p>
- <p><tt>% ./hello.native</tt></p></li>
-
+<div class="doc_code">
+<pre>
+% hello.cbe.exe
+</pre>
+</div></li>
</ol>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
+ <ul>
+ <li>In Visual C++, if you are linking with the x86 target statically, the
+ linker will remove the x86 target library from your generated executable or
+ shared library because there are no references to it. You can force the
+ linker to include these references by using
+ <tt>"/INCLUDE:_X86TargetMachineModule"</tt> when linking. In the Visual
+ Studio IDE, this can be added in
+<tt>Project Properties->Linker->Input->Force Symbol References</tt>.
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+
<p>If you are having problems building or using LLVM, or if you have any other
general questions about LLVM, please consult the <a href="FAQ.html">Frequently
Asked Questions</a> page.</p>
out:</p>
<ul>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/">LLVM homepage</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/doxygen/">LLVM doxygen tree</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/docs/Projects.html">Starting a Project
- that Uses LLVM</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://llvm.org/">LLVM homepage</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://llvm.org/doxygen/">LLVM doxygen tree</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://llvm.org/docs/Projects.html">Starting a Project
+ that Uses LLVM</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<hr>
<address>
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- <a href="mailto:sabre@nondot.org">Chris Lattner</a><br>
- <a href="http://llvm.x10sys.com/rspencer/">Reid Spencer</a><br>
- <a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu">The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure</a><br>
+ <a href="mailto:jeffc@jolt-lang.org">Jeff Cohen</a><br>
+ <a href="http://llvm.org">The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure</a><br>
Last modified: $Date$
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