<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="llvm.css" type="text/css">
- <title>LLVM 1.5 Release Notes</title>
+ <title>LLVM 1.9 Release Notes</title>
</head>
<body>
-<div class="doc_title">LLVM 1.5 Release Notes</div>
+<div class="doc_title">LLVM 1.9 Release Notes</div>
<ol>
<li><a href="#intro">Introduction</a></li>
</ol>
<div class="doc_author">
- <p>Written by the <a href="http://llvm.
cs.uiuc.edu">LLVM Team</a><p>
+ <p>Written by the <a href="http://llvm.
org">LLVM Team</a><p>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This document contains the release notes for the LLVM compiler
-infrastructure, release 1.5. Here we describe the status of LLVM, including any
+infrastructure, release 1.9. Here we describe the status of LLVM, including any
known problems and major improvements from the previous release. The most
-up-to-date version of this document can be found on the <a
-href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/releases/1.5/">LLVM 1.5 web site</a>. If you are
+up-to-date version of this document (corresponding to LLVM CVS) can be found
+on the <a
+href="http://llvm.org/releases/">LLVM releases web site</a>. If you are
not reading this on the LLVM web pages, you should probably go there because
this document may be updated after the release.</p>
<p>For more information about LLVM, including information about the latest
-release, please check out the <a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu">main LLVM
+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 CVS 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 the current or previous releases, see the <a
-href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/releases/">releases page</a>.</p>
+href="http://llvm.org/releases/">releases page</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>This is the sixth public release of the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure.</p>
-
-<p> At this time, LLVM is known to correctly compile a wide range of C and C++
-programs, including the SPEC CPU95 & 2000 suite. It includes bug fixes for
-those problems found since the 1.4 release and a large number of new features
-and enhancements, described below.</p>
+<p>This is the tenth public release of the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure. This
+release incorporates a large number of enhancements, new features, and bug
+fixes. We recommend that all users of previous LLVM versions upgrade.
+</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
-<a name="newfeatures">New Features in LLVM 1.5</a>
+<a name="newfeatures">New Features in LLVM 1.9</a>
</div>
<!--_________________________________________________________________________-->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection">New Native Code Generators</div>
-
+<div class="doc_subsubsection"><a name="x86-64">New X86-64 Backend</a></div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>
-This release includes new native code generators for <a
-href="#alpha-be">Alpha</a>, <a href="#ia64-be">IA-64</a>, and SPARC-V8 (32-bit
-SPARC). These code generators are still beta quality, but are progressing
-rapidly.
-</p>
+<p>LLVM 1.9 now fully supports the x86-64 instruction set on Mac OS/X, and
+supports it on Linux (and other operating systems) when compiling in -static
+mode. LLVM includes JIT support for X86-64, and supports both Intel EMT-64T
+and AMD-64 architectures. The X86-64 instruction set permits addressing a
+64-bit addressing space and provides the compiler with twice the
+number of integer registers to use.</p>
</div>
<!--_________________________________________________________________________-->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection">New Instruction Selector Framework</div>
-
+<div class="doc_subsubsection"><a name="lto">Link-Time Optimization integration
+with native linkers</a></div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>This release includes a <a href="CodeGenerator.html#instselect">new framework
-for building instruction selectors</a>, which has long been the hardest part of
-building a new LLVM target. This framework handles a lot of the mundane (but
-easy to get wrong) details of writing the instruction selector, such as
-generating efficient code for <a
-href="LangRef.html#i_getelementptr">getelementptr</a> instructions, promoting
-small integer types to larger types (e.g. for RISC targets with one size of
-integer registers), expanding 64-bit integer operations for 32-bit hosts, etc.
-Currently, the X86, PowerPC, Alpha, and IA-64 backends use this framework. The
-SPARC backends will be migrated when time permits.
-</p>
+<p>LLVM now includes <a href="LinkTimeOptimization.html">liblto</a> which can
+be used to integrate LLVM Link-Time Optimization support into a native linker.
+This allows LLVM .bc to transparently participate with linking an application,
+even when some .o files are in LLVM form and some are not.</p>
</div>
<!--_________________________________________________________________________-->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection">New Support For Custom Calling Convetions</div>
-
+<div class="doc_subsubsection"><a name="dwarf">DWARF debugging
+support for Linux, Cygwin and MinGW on X86</a></div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>LLVM 1.5 adds supports for <a href="LangRef.html#callingconv">custom and
-target-specific calling conventions</a>. Traditionally, the LLVM code
-generators match the native C calling conventions for a target. This is
-important for compatibility, but is not very flexible. This release allows
-custom calling conventions to be established for functions, and defines three
-target-independent conventions (C call, fast call, and cold call) which may be
-supported by code generators. When possible, the LLVM optimizer promotes C
-functions to use the "fastcc" convention, allowing the use of more efficient
-calling sequences (e.g., parameters are passed in registers in the X86 target).
-</p>
-
-<p>Targets may now also define target-specific calling conventions, allowing
-LLVM to fully support calling convention altering options (e.g. GCC's
-<tt>-mregparm</tt> flag) and well-defined target conventions (e.g. stdcall and
-fastcall on X86).</p>
+<p>llvm-gcc4 now supports generating debugging info for Linux, Cygwin and MinGW.
+This extends the PPC/Darwin and X86/Darwin debugging support available in the
+1.8 release. DWARF is a standard debugging format used on many platforms.</p>
</div>
<!--_________________________________________________________________________-->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection">New Support for "Proper Tail Calls"</div>
-
+<div class="doc_subsubsection"><a name="optimizer">Optimizer
+Improvements</a></div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>The release now includes support for <a
-href="http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/277650.277719">proper tail calls</a>, as
-required to implement languages like Scheme. Tail calls make use of two
-features: custom calling conventions (described above), which allow the code
-generator to emit code for the caller to deallocate its own stack when it
-returns. The second feature is a flag on the <a href="LangRef.html#i_call">call
-instruction</a>, which indicates that the callee does not access the callers
-stack frame (indicating that it is acceptable to deallocate the caller stack
-before invoking the callee). LLVM proper tail calls run on the system stack (as
-do normal calls), supports indirect tail calls, tail calls with arbitrary
-numbers of arguments, tail calls where the callee requires more argument space
-than the caller, etc. The only case not supported are varargs calls, but that
-could be added if desired.
-</p>
+<p>The mid-level optimizer is now faster and produces better code in many cases.
+ Significant changes include:</p>
-<p>In order for a front-end to get guaranteed tail call, it must mark functions
-as "fastcc", mark calls with the 'tail' marker, and follow the call with a
-return of the called value (or void). The optimizer and code generator attempt
-to handle more general cases, but the simple case will always work if the code
-generator supports tail calls. Here is a simple example:</p>
-
-<p><pre>
- fastcc int %bar(int %X, int(double, int)* %FP) { ;<i> fastcc</i>
- %Y = tail call fastcc int %FP(double 0.0, int %X) ;<i> tail, fastcc</i>
- ret int %Y
- }
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>In LLVM 1.5, the X86 code generator is the only target that has been enhanced
-to support proper tail calls (other targets will be enhanced in future).
-Further, because this support was added very close to the release, it is
-disabled by default. Pass <tt>-enable-x86-fastcc</tt> to llc to enable it (this
-will be enabled by default in the next release). The example above compiles to:
-</p>
+<ul>
+<li>LLVM includes a new 'predicate simplifier' pass, which
+ currently performs dominator tree-based optimizations.</li>
+<li>The complete loop unroll pass now supports unrolling of
+ multiple basic block loops.</li>
+<li>The 'globalopt' pass can now perform the scalar replacement of
+ aggregates transformation on some heap allocations.</li>
+<li>The globalsmodref-aa alias analysis can now track 'indirect pointer
+ globals' more accurately.</li>
+<li>The instruction combiner can now perform element propagation
+analysis of vector expressions, eliminating computation of vector elements
+that are not used.</li>
+</ul>
+
+</div>
-<p><pre>
- bar:
- sub ESP, 8 # Callee uses more space than the caller
- mov ECX, DWORD PTR [ESP + 8] # Get the old return address
- mov DWORD PTR [ESP + 4], 0 # First half of 0.0
- mov DWORD PTR [ESP + 8], 0 # Second half of 0.0
- mov DWORD PTR [ESP], ECX # Put the return address where it belongs
- jmp EDX # Tail call "FP"
-</pre></p>
+<!--_________________________________________________________________________-->
+<div class="doc_subsubsection"><a name="codegen">Code
+Generator Enhancements</a></div>
+<div class="doc_text">
<p>
-With fastcc on X86, the first two integer arguments are passed in EAX/EDX, the
-callee pops its arguments off the stack, and the argument area is always a
-multiple of 8 bytes in size.
+The LLVM Target-Independent code generator now supports more target features and
+optimizes many cases more aggressively. New features include:
</p>
-</div>
+<ul>
+<li>LLVM now includes a late branch folding pass which optimizes code
+ layout, performs several branch optzns, and deletes unreachable code.</li>
+<li>The code generator now support targets that have pre/post-increment
+ addressing modes.</li>
+<li>LLVM now supports dynamically-loadable register allocators and
+ schedulers.</li>
+<li>LLVM 1.9 includes several improvements to inline asm support,
+ including support for new constraints and modifiers.</li>
+<li>The register coalescer is now more aggressive than before,
+ allowing it to eliminate more copies.</li>
+</ul>
-<!--_________________________________________________________________________-->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection">Other New Features</div>
+<p>In addition, the LLVM target description format has itself been extended in
+ several ways:</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>tblgen now allows definition of '<a
+ href="TableGenFundamentals.html#multiclass">multiclasses</a>' which can be
+ used to factor instruction patterns more aggressively in .td files.</li>
+<li>LLVM has a new TargetAsmInfo class which captures a variety of
+ information about the target assembly language format.</li>
+<li>.td files now support "<tt>${:foo}</tt>" syntax for encoding
+ subtarget-specific assembler syntax into instruction descriptions.</li>
+</ul>
-<div class="doc_text">
-<ol>
- <li>LLVM now includes an <a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR415">
- Interprocedural Sparse Conditional Constant Propagation</a> pass, named
- -ipsccp, which is run by default at link-time.</li>
- <li>LLVM 1.5 is now about 15% faster than LLVM 1.4 and its core data
- structures use about 30% less memory.</li>
- <li>Support for Microsoft Visual Studio is improved, and <a
- href="GettingStartedVS.html">now documented</a>.</li>
- <li><a href="GettingStarted.html#config">Configuring LLVM to build a subset
- of the available targets</a> is now implemented, via the
- <tt>--enable-targets=</tt> option.</li>
- <li>LLVM can now create native shared libraries with '<tt>llvm-gcc ...
- -shared -Wl,-native</tt>' (or with <tt>-Wl,-native-cbe</tt>).</li>
- <li>LLVM now supports a new "<a href="LangRef.html#i_prefetch">llvm.prefetch
- </a>" intrinsic, and llvm-gcc now supports __builtin_prefetch.
- <li>LLVM now supports intrinsics for <a href="LangRef.html#int_count">bit
- counting</a> and llvm-gcc now implements the GCC
- <tt>__builtin_popcount</tt>, <tt>__builtin_ctz</tt>, and
- <tt>__builtin_clz</tt> builtins.</li>
- <li>LLVM now builds on HP-UX with the HP aCC Compiler.</li>
- <li>The LLVM X86 backend can now emit Cygwin-compatible .s files.</li>
- <li>LLVM now includes workarounds in the code generator generator which
- reduces the likelyhood of <a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR448">GCC
- hitting swap during optimized builds</a>.</li>
-</ol>
-</div>
+<p>Further, several significant target-specific enhancements are included in
+LLVM 1.9:</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>The LLVM ARM backend now supports more instructions
+ and the use of a frame pointer. It is now possible to build
+ libgcc and a simple cross compiler, but it is not considered "complete" yet.
+ </li>
+<li>LLVM supports the Win32 dllimport/dllexport linkage and
+ stdcall/fastcall calling conventions.</li>
+</ul>
-<!--=========================================================================-->
-<div class="doc_subsection">
-<a name="codequality">Code Quality Improvements in LLVM 1.5</a>
</div>
+<!--_________________________________________________________________________-->
+<div class="doc_subsubsection"><a name="other">Other Improvements</a></div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<ol>
-<li>The -globalopt pass now promotes non-address-taken static globals that are
-only accessed in main to SSA registers.</li>
+<p>This release includes many other improvements, including improvements to
+ the optimizers and code generators (improving the generated code) changes to
+ speed up the compiler in many ways (improving algorithms and fine tuning
+ code), and changes to reduce the code size of the compiler itself.</p>
-<li>Loops with trip counts based on array pointer comparisons (e.g. "<tt>for (i
-= 0; &A[i] != &A[100]; ++i) ...</tt>") are optimized better than before,
-which primarily helps iterator-intensive C++ codes.</li>
+<p>More specific changes include:</p>
-<li>The code generator now uses information about takes advantage of commutative
-two-address instructions when performing register allocation.</li>
-
-<li>A new pass has been added to gccas to simplify well-known library calls. The
-pass will short circuit calls to many of the string, memory, and printf type
-functions or replace the calls with simpler/faster calls, where possible given
-information known statically about the arguments to the call. To use the
-pass, specify <tt>-simplify-libcalls</tt> to the <tt>opt</tt> tool.</li>
-
-
-</ol>
+<ul>
+<li>The llvm-test framework now supports SPEC2006.</li>
+<li>LLVM now includes a <a href="GetElementPtr.html">FAQ about the
+<tt>getelementptr</tt> instruction</a>.</li>
+<li>Bugpoint now supports a new "<tt>-find-bugs</tt>" mode. This mode makes
+ bugpoint permute pass sequences to try to expose bugs due to pass
+ sequencing.</li>
+<li>The JIT now supports lazily streaming code from multiple modules at a
+ time, implicitly linking the code as it goes.</li>
+</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
-<a name="bugfix">Significant Bugs Fixed in LLVM 1.5</a>
+<a name="apichanges">Significant API Changes in LLVM 1.9</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
+<p>Several significant API changes have been made. If you are maintaining
+out-of-tree code, please be aware that:</p>
-<p>Bugs fixed in the LLVM Core:</p>
-<ol>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR491">[dse] DSE deletes stores that
- are partially overwritten by smaller stores</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR548">[instcombine] miscompilation of
- setcc or setcc in one case</a></li>
- <li>Transition code for LLVM 1.0 style varargs was removed from the .ll file
- parser. LLVM 1.0 bytecode files are still supported. </li>
-</ol>
-
-<p>Code Generator Bugs:</p>
-<ol>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR490">[cbackend] Logical constant
- expressions (and/or/xor) not implemented</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR511">[cbackend] C backend does not
- respect 'volatile'</a></li>
-</ol>
-
-<p>Bugs in the C/C++ front-end:</p>
-<ol>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR487">[llvmgcc] llvm-gcc incorrectly
- rejects some constant initializers involving the addresses of array
- elements</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR501">[llvm-g++] Crash compiling
- anonymous union</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR509">[llvm-g++] Do not use dynamic
- initialization where static init will do</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR510">[llvmgcc] Field offset
- miscalculated for some structure fields following bit fields</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR513">[llvm-g++] Temporary lifetimes
- incorrect for short circuit logical operations</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR517">[llvm-gcc] Crash compiling
- bitfield <-> aggregate assignment</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR520">[llvm-g++] Error compiling
- virtual function thunk with an unnamed argument</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR522">[llvm-gcc] Crash on certain
- C99 complex number routines</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR529">[llvm-g++] Crash using placement
- new on an array type</a></li>
-</ol>
+<ul>
+<li>The ConstantSInt and ConstantUInt classes have been merged into the
+ ConstantInt class.</li>
+<li><p>As a step towards making LLVM's integer types signless, several new
+instructions have been added to LLVM. The <tt>Div</tt> instruction is now
+<tt>UDiv</tt>, <tt>SDiv</tt>, and <tt>FDiv</tt>. The <tt>Rem</tt> instruction
+is now <tt>URem</tt>, <tt>SRem</tt> and <tt>FRem</tt>. See the
+<a href="LangRef.html">Language Reference</a> for details on these new
+instructions.</p>
+<li><p><tt>ConstantBool::True</tt> and <tt>ConstantBool::False</tt> have been
+ renamed to <tt>ConstantBool::getTrue()</tt> and
+ <tt>ConstantBool::getFalse()</tt>.</p></li>
+<li>The 'analyze' tool has been merged into the 'opt' tool.</li>
+</ul>
</div>
+
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="portability">Portability and Supported Platforms</a>
<p>LLVM is known to work on the following platforms:</p>
<ul>
-<li>Intel and AMD machines running Red Hat Linux and FreeBSD (and probably
- other unix-like systems).</li>
+ <li>Intel and AMD machines running Red Hat Linux, Fedora Core and FreeBSD
+ (and probably other unix-like systems).</li>
+<li>Intel and AMD machines running on Win32 using MinGW libraries (native)</li>
<li>Sun UltraSPARC workstations running Solaris 8.</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>PowerPC-based Mac OS X systems, running 10.2 and above.</li>
+<li>PowerPC and X86-based Mac OS X systems, running 10.2 and above in 32-bit and
+ 64-bit modes.</li>
<li>Alpha-based machines running Debian GNU/Linux.</li>
<li>Itanium-based machines running Linux and HP-UX.</li>
</ul>
<p>This section contains all known problems with the LLVM system, listed by
component. As new problems are discovered, they will be added to these
sections. If you run into a problem, please check the <a
-href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/bugs/">LLVM bug database</a> and submit a bug if
+href="http://llvm.org/bugs/">LLVM bug database</a> and submit a bug if
there isn't already one.</p>
</div>
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 llvmdev list.</p>
+components, please contact us on the <a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">LLVMdev list</a>.</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>The <tt>-cee</tt> pass is known to be buggy, and may be removed in in a
+ future release.</li>
+<li>The IA64 code generator is experimental.</li>
+<li>The ARM code generator is experimental.</li>
+<li>The Alpha JIT is experimental.</li>
+<li>"<tt>-filetype=asm</tt>" (the default) is the only supported value for the
+ <tt>-filetype</tt> llc 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 <a href="http://llvm.org/PR879">inline
+ assembly that uses the X86 floating point stack</a>. See the <a
+ href="http://llvm.org/PR879">bug</a> for details on workarounds on
+ Linux.</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><a href="http://llvm.org/PR642">PowerPC backend does not correctly
+implement ordered FP comparisons</a>.</li>
+<li>The 64-bit PowerPC backend is not fully stable. If you desire PPC64 support,
+ please use mainline CVS LLVM, which has several important bug fixes.</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 following passes are incomplete or buggy, and may be removed in future
- releases: <tt>-cee, -branch-combine, -instloops, -paths, -pre</tt></li>
-<li>The <tt>llvm-db</tt> tool is in a very early stage of development, but can
- be used to step through programs and inspect the stack.</li>
-<li>The "iterative scan" register allocator (enabled with
- <tt>-regalloc=iterativescan</tt>) is not stable.</li>
-<li>The SparcV8, Alpha, and IA64 code generators are experimental.</li>
+<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="c-be">Known problems with the C back-end</a>
+</div>
+
+<div class="doc_text">
+
+<ul>
+
+<li>The C back-end produces code that violates the ANSI C Type-Based Alias
+Analysis rules. As such, special options may be necessary to compile the code
+(for example, GCC requires the <tt>-fno-strict-aliasing</tt> option). This
+problem probably cannot be fixed.</li>
+
+<li><a href="http://llvm.org/PR56">Zero arg vararg functions are not
+supported</a>. This should not affect LLVM produced by the C or C++
+frontends.</li>
+
+<li>The C backend does not correctly implement the <a
+href="LangRef.html#i_stacksave"><tt>llvm.stacksave</tt></a> or
+<a href="LangRef.html#i_stackrestore"><tt>llvm.stackrestore</tt></a>
+intrinsics. This means that some code compiled by it can run out of stack
+space if they depend on these (e.g. C99 varargs).</li>
+
+<li><a href="http://llvm.org/PR802">The C backend does not support inline
+ assembly code</a>.</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>C++ programs are likely to fail on IA64, as calls to <tt>setjmp</tt> are
+made where the argument is not 16-byte aligned, as required on IA64. (Strictly
+speaking this is not a bug in the IA64 back-end; it will also be encountered
+when building C++ programs using the C back-end.)</li>
+
+<li>The C++ front-end does not use <a href="http://llvm.org/PR406">IA64
+ABI compliant layout of v-tables</a>. In particular, it just stores function
+pointers instead of function descriptors in the vtable. This bug prevents
+mixing C++ code compiled with LLVM with C++ objects compiled by other C++
+compilers.</li>
+
+<li>There are a few ABI violations which will lead to problems when mixing LLVM
+output with code built with other compilers, particularly for floating-point
+programs.</li>
+
+<li>Defining vararg functions is not supported (but calling them is ok).</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>The ARM backend is currently in early development stages, it is not
+ready for production use.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<ul>
<li>In the JIT, <tt>dlsym()</tt> on a symbol compiled by the JIT will not
work.</li>
- <li>The JIT does not use mutexes to protect its internal data structures. As
- such, execution of a threaded program could cause these data structures to be
- corrupted.
- </li>
- <li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR240">The lower-invoke pass does not
- mark values live across a setjmp as volatile</a>. This missing feature
- only affects targets whose setjmp/longjmp libraries do not save and restore
- the entire register file.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="doc_subsubsection">Bugs</div>
<div class="doc_text">
-<ul>
-<li>C99 Variable sized arrays do not release stack memory when they go out of
- scope. Thus, the following program may run out of stack space:
-<pre>
- for (i = 0; i != 1000000; ++i) {
- int X[n];
- foo(X);
- }
-</pre></li>
-
-<li>Initialization of global union variables can only be done <a
-href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR162">with the largest union member</a>.</li>
-</ul>
+<p>
+
+<p>llvm-gcc4 is far more stable and produces better code than llvm-gcc3, but
+does not currently support <a href="http://llvm.org/PR869">Link-Time
+Optimization</a> or <a href="http://llvm.org/PR870">C++ Exception Handling</a>,
+which llvm-gcc3 does.</p>
+
+<p>llvm-gcc4 does not support the <a href="http://llvm.org/PR947">GCC indirect
+goto extension</a>, but llvm-gcc3 does.</p>
+
</div>
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<ul>
-<li>Inline assembly is not yet supported.</li>
-
<li>"long double" is transformed by the front-end into "double". There is no
support for floating point data types of any size other than 32 and 64
bits.</li>
-<li>The following Unix system functionality has not been tested and may not
-work:
- <ol>
- <li><tt>sigsetjmp</tt>, <tt>siglongjmp</tt> - These are not turned into the
- appropriate <tt>invoke</tt>/<tt>unwind</tt> instructions. Note that
- <tt>setjmp</tt> and <tt>longjmp</tt> <em>are</em> compiled correctly.
- <li><tt>getcontext</tt>, <tt>setcontext</tt>, <tt>makecontext</tt>
- - These functions have not been tested.
- </ol></li>
-
<li>Although many GCC extensions are supported, some are not. In particular,
the following extensions are known to <b>not be</b> supported:
<ol>
<li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Local-Labels.html#Local%20Labels">Local Labels</a>: Labels local to a block.</li>
<li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Nested-Functions.html#Nested%20Functions">Nested Functions</a>: As in Algol and Pascal, lexical scoping of functions.</li>
<li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Constructing-Calls.html#Constructing%20Calls">Constructing Calls</a>: Dispatching a call to another function.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Extended-Asm.html#Extended%20Asm">Extended Asm</a>: Assembler instructions with C expressions as operands.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Constraints.html#Constraints">Constraints</a>: Constraints for asm operands.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Asm-Labels.html#Asm%20Labels">Asm Labels</a>: Specifying the assembler name to use for a C symbol.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Explicit-Reg-Vars.html#Explicit%20Reg%20Vars">Explicit Reg Vars</a>: Defining variables residing in specified registers.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Vector-Extensions.html#Vector%20Extensions">Vector Extensions</a>: Using vector instructions through built-in functions.</li>
- <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Target-Builtins.html#Target%20Builtins">Target Builtins</a>: Built-in functions specific to particular targets.</li>
<li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Thread_002dLocal.html">Thread-Local</a>: Per-thread variables.</li>
<li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Pragmas.html#Pragmas">Pragmas</a>: Pragmas accepted by GCC.</li>
</ol>
Declaring that functions have no side effects or that they can never
return.<br>
- <b>Supported:</b> <tt>format</tt>, <tt>format_arg</tt>, <tt>non_null</tt>,
- <tt>noreturn</tt>, <tt>constructor</tt>, <tt>destructor</tt>,
- <tt>unused</tt>,
- <tt>deprecated</tt>, <tt>warn_unused_result</tt>, <tt>weak</tt><br>
+ <b>Supported:</b> <tt>constructor</tt>, <tt>destructor</tt>,
+ <tt>deprecated</tt>, <tt>fastcall</tt>, <tt>format</tt>,
+ <tt>format_arg</tt>, <tt>non_null</tt>, <tt>noreturn</tt>,
+ <tt>section</tt>, <tt>stdcall</tt>, <tt>unused</tt>, <tt>used</tt>,
+ <tt>visibility</tt>, <tt>warn_unused_result</tt>, <tt>weak</tt><br>
<b>Ignored:</b> <tt>noinline</tt>,
<tt>always_inline</tt>, <tt>pure</tt>, <tt>const</tt>, <tt>nothrow</tt>,
<tt>malloc</tt>, <tt>no_instrument_function</tt>, <tt>cdecl</tt><br>
- <b>Unsupported:</b> <tt>used</tt>, <tt>section</tt>, <tt>alias</tt>,
- <tt>visibility</tt>, <tt>regparm</tt>, <tt>stdcall</tt>,
- <tt>fastcall</tt>, all other target specific attributes</li>
+ <b>Unsupported:</b> <tt>alias</tt>, <tt>regparm</tt>, all other target specific
+ attributes</li>
<li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Variable-Attributes.html#Variable%20Attributes">Variable Attributes</a>:
Specifying attributes of variables.<br>
<b>Supported:</b> <tt>cleanup</tt>, <tt>common</tt>, <tt>nocommon</tt>,
- <tt>deprecated</tt>, <tt>transparent_union</tt>,
- <tt>unused</tt>, <tt>weak</tt><br>
+ <tt>deprecated</tt>, <tt>dllimport</tt>, <tt>dllexport</tt>,
+ <tt>section</tt>, <tt>transparent_union</tt>, <tt>unused</tt>,
+ <tt>used</tt>, <tt>weak</tt><br>
<b>Unsupported:</b> <tt>aligned</tt>, <tt>mode</tt>, <tt>packed</tt>,
- <tt>section</tt>, <tt>shared</tt>, <tt>tls_model</tt>,
- <tt>vector_size</tt>, <tt>dllimport</tt>,
- <tt>dllexport</tt>, all target specific attributes.</li>
+ <tt>shared</tt>, <tt>tls_model</tt>,
+ <tt>vector_size</tt>, all target specific attributes.
+ </li>
<li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Type-Attributes.html#Type%20Attributes">Type Attributes</a>: Specifying attributes of types.<br>
<b>Supported:</b> <tt>transparent_union</tt>, <tt>unused</tt>,
<li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Empty-Structures.html#Empty%20Structures">Empty Structures</a>: Structures with no members.</li>
<li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Variadic-Macros.html#Variadic%20Macros">Variadic Macros</a>: Macros with a variable number of arguments.</li>
<li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Escaped-Newlines.html#Escaped%20Newlines">Escaped Newlines</a>: Slightly looser rules for escaped newlines.</li>
+ <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Extended-Asm.html#Extended%20Asm">Extended Asm</a>: Assembler instructions with C expressions as operands.</li>
+ <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Constraints.html#Constraints">Constraints</a>: Constraints for asm operands.</li>
+ <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Asm-Labels.html#Asm%20Labels">Asm Labels</a>: Specifying the assembler name to use for a C symbol.</li>
+ <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Explicit-Reg-Vars.html#Explicit%20Reg%20Vars">Explicit Reg Vars</a>: Defining variables residing in specified registers.</li>
+ <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Vector-Extensions.html#Vector%20Extensions">Vector Extensions</a>: Using vector instructions through built-in functions.</li>
+ <li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Target-Builtins.html#Target%20Builtins">Target Builtins</a>: Built-in functions specific to particular targets.</li>
<li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Subscripting.html#Subscripting">Subscripting</a>: Any array can be subscripted, even if not an lvalue.</li>
<li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Pointer-Arith.html#Pointer%20Arith">Pointer Arith</a>: Arithmetic on <code>void</code>-pointers and function pointers.</li>
<li><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Initializers.html#Initializers">Initializers</a>: Non-constant initializers.</li>
</div>
-<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
-<div class="doc_subsubsection">Bugs</div>
-
-<div class="doc_text">
-
-<ul>
-<li>The C++ front-end inherits all problems afflicting the <a href="#c-fe">C
- front-end</a>.</li>
-
-<li><b>IA-64 specific</b>: The C++ front-end does not use <a
-href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR406">IA64 ABI compliant layout of v-tables</a>.
-In particular, it just stores function pointers instead of function
-descriptors in the vtable. This bug prevents mixing C++ code compiled with
-LLVM with C++ objects compiled by other C++ compilers.</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-</div>
-
<!-- _______________________________________________________________________ -->
<div class="doc_subsubsection">
Notes
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
-
<ul>
-
-<li>The C++ front-end is based on a pre-release of the GCC 3.4 C++ parser. This
-parser is significantly more standards compliant (and picky) than prior GCC
-versions. For more information, see the C++ section of the <a
-href="http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-3.4/changes.html">GCC 3.4 release notes</a>.</li>
+<li>llvm-gcc4 does not support C++ exception handling at all yet.</li>
<li>Destructors for local objects are not always run when a <tt>longjmp</tt> is
performed. In particular, destructors for objects in the <tt>longjmp</tt>ing
representation issues. Because we use this API, code generated by the LLVM
compilers should be binary compatible with machine code generated by other
Itanium ABI C++ compilers (such as G++, the Intel and HP compilers, etc).
- <i>However</i>, the exception handling mechanism used by LLVM is very
+ <i>However</i>, the exception handling mechanism used by llvm-gcc3 is very
different from the model used in the Itanium ABI, so <b>exceptions will not
interact correctly</b>. </li>
</div>
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection">
- <a name="x86-be">Known problems with the X86 back-end</a>
-</div>
-
-<div class="doc_text">
-
-<ul>
- <li>None yet</li>
-</ul>
-
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection">
- <a name="sparcv9-be">Known problems with the SparcV9 back-end</a>
-</div>
-
-<div class="doc_text">
-
-<ul>
-<li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR60">[sparcv9] SparcV9 backend miscompiles
-several programs in the LLVM test suite</a></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>None yet</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>The C back-end produces code that violates the ANSI C Type-Based Alias
-Analysis rules. As such, special options may be necessary to compile the code
-(for example, GCC requires the <tt>-fno-strict-aliasing</tt> option). This
-problem probably cannot be fixed.</li>
-
-<li><a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/PR56">Zero arg vararg functions are not
-supported</a>. This should not affect LLVM produced by the C or C++
-frontends.</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 arithmatic sequences which may trap do not have the appropriate nops inserted to ensure restartability.</li>
-
-<li>Vararg functions are not supported.</li>
-
-<li>Due to the vararg problems, C++ exceptions do not work. Small changes are required to the CFE (which break correctness in the exception handler) to compile the exception handling library (and thus the C++ standard library).</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>C++ programs are likely to fail on IA64, as calls to <tt>setjmp</tt> are
-made where the argument is not 16-byte aligned, as required on IA64. (Strictly
-speaking this is not a bug in the IA64 back-end; it will also be encountered
-when building C++ programs using the C back-end.)</li>
-
-<li>There are a few ABI violations which will lead to problems
-when mixing LLVM output with code built with other compilers,
-particularly for C++ and floating-point programs.</li>
-
-<li>Vararg functions are not supported.</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<div class="doc_text">
-<p>A wide variety of additional information is available on the LLVM web page,
-including <a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/docs/#maillist">mailing lists</a> and
-<a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/pubs/">publications describing algorithms and
+<p>A wide variety of additional information is available on the <a
+href="http://llvm.org">LLVM web page</a>, including <a
+href="http://llvm.org/docs/">documentation</a> and <a
+href="http://llvm.org/pubs/">publications describing algorithms and
components implemented in LLVM</a>. The web page also contains versions of the
API documentation which is up-to-date with the CVS 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://mail.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">mailing
+us via the <a href="http://llvm.org/docs/#maillist"> mailing
lists</a>.</p>
</div>
<a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer"><img
src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-html401" alt="Valid HTML 4.01!" /></a>
- <a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu">The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure</a><br>
+ <a href="http://llvm.org/">The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure</a><br>
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