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llvm-mirror/docs/ReleaseNotes.html
Gabor Greif 7ae22e4471 re-commit r109220, the compile error has already been fixed 
Simplifying use_iterators by dereferencing
is not a good idea. The codebase does not depend
in this any more, and it may introduce hidden
runtime cost. If you get compile errors, please
dereference your iterator before passing to cast<>
(and friends).

Also: please consider caching the result of
operator* and reusing that instead of dereferencing
many times.

llvm-svn: 109425
2010-07-26 18:48:07 +00:00

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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="llvm.css" type="text/css">
<title>LLVM 2.8 Release Notes</title>
</head>
<body>
<div class="doc_title">LLVM 2.8 Release Notes</div>
<img align=right src="http://llvm.org/img/DragonSmall.png"
width="136" height="136" alt="LLVM Dragon Logo">
<ol>
<li><a href="#intro">Introduction</a></li>
<li><a href="#subproj">Sub-project Status Update</a></li>
<li><a href="#externalproj">External Projects Using LLVM 2.8</a></li>
<li><a href="#whatsnew">What's New in LLVM 2.8?</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>
<h1 style="color:red">These are in-progress notes for the upcoming LLVM 2.8
release.<br>
You may prefer the
<a href="http://llvm.org/releases/2.7/docs/ReleaseNotes.html">LLVM 2.7
Release Notes</a>.</h1>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="intro">Introduction</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This document contains the release notes for the LLVM Compiler
Infrastructure, release 2.8. 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://lists.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>
<!--
Almost dead code.
include/llvm/Analysis/LiveValues.h => Dan
lib/Transforms/IPO/MergeFunctions.cpp => consider for 2.8.
llvm/Analysis/PointerTracking.h => Edwin wants this, consider for 2.8.
ABCD, GEPSplitterPass
MSIL backend?
lib/Transforms/Utils/SSI.cpp -> ABCD depends on it.
-->
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combiner-aa?
strong phi elim
llvm.dbg.value: variable debug info for optimized code
loop dependence analysis
-->
<!-- for announcement email:
Logo web page.
Many new papers added to /pubs/
-->
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="subproj">Sub-project Status Update</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
The LLVM 2.8 distribution currently consists of code from the core LLVM
repository (which roughly includes the LLVM optimizers, code generators
and supporting tools), the Clang repository and the llvm-gcc repository. In
addition to this code, the LLVM Project includes other sub-projects that are in
development. Here we include updates on these subprojects.
</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="clang">Clang: C/C++/Objective-C Frontend Toolkit</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p><a href="http://clang.llvm.org/">Clang</a> is an LLVM front end for the C,
C++, and Objective-C languages. Clang aims to provide a better user experience
through expressive diagnostics, a high level of conformance to language
standards, fast compilation, and low memory use. Like LLVM, Clang provides a
modular, library-based architecture that makes it suitable for creating or
integrating with other development tools. Clang is considered a
production-quality compiler for C and Objective-C on x86 (32- and 64-bit).</p>
<p>In the LLVM 2.8 time-frame, the Clang team has made many improvements:</p>
<ul>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="clangsa">Clang Static Analyzer</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>The <a href="http://clang-analyzer.llvm.org/">Clang Static Analyzer</a>
project is an effort to use static source code analysis techniques to
automatically find bugs in C and Objective-C programs (and hopefully <a
href="http://clang-analyzer.llvm.org/dev_cxx.html">C++ in the
future</a>!). The tool is very good at finding bugs that occur on specific
paths through code, such as on error conditions.</p>
<p>In the LLVM 2.8 time-frame,
</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 Machine (Microsoft .NET is an
implementation of the CLI) using LLVM for static and just-in-time
compilation.</p>
<p>With the release of LLVM 2.8, ...</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="compiler-rt">compiler-rt: Compiler Runtime Library</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
The new LLVM <a href="http://compiler-rt.llvm.org/">compiler-rt project</a>
is a simple library that provides an implementation of the low-level
target-specific hooks required by code generation and other runtime components.
For example, when compiling for a 32-bit target, converting a double to a 64-bit
unsigned integer is compiled into a runtime call to the "__fixunsdfdi"
function. The compiler-rt library provides highly optimized implementations of
this and other low-level routines (some are 3x faster than the equivalent
libgcc routines).</p>
<p>
All of the code in the compiler-rt project is available under the standard LLVM
License, a "BSD-style" license. New in LLVM 2.8:
Soft float support
</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="dragonegg">DragonEgg: llvm-gcc ported to gcc-4.5</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
<a href="http://dragonegg.llvm.org/">DragonEgg</a> is a port of llvm-gcc to
gcc-4.5. Unlike llvm-gcc, which makes many intrusive changes to the underlying
gcc-4.2 code, dragonegg in theory does not require any gcc-4.5 modifications
whatsoever (currently one small patch is needed). This is thanks to the new
<a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/plugins">gcc plugin architecture</a>, which
makes it possible to modify the behaviour of gcc at runtime by loading a plugin,
which is nothing more than a dynamic library which conforms to the gcc plugin
interface. DragonEgg is a gcc plugin that causes the LLVM optimizers to be run
instead of the gcc optimizers, and the LLVM code generators instead of the gcc
code generators, just like llvm-gcc. To use it, you add
"-fplugin=path/dragonegg.so" to the gcc-4.5 command line, and gcc-4.5 magically
becomes llvm-gcc-4.5!
</p>
<p>
DragonEgg is still a work in progress. Currently C works very well, while C++,
Ada and Fortran work fairly well. All other languages either don't work at all,
or only work poorly. For the moment only the x86-32 and x86-64 targets are
supported, and only on linux and darwin (darwin needs an additional gcc patch).
</p>
<p>
2.8 status here.
</p>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="mc">llvm-mc: Machine Code Toolkit</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>
The LLVM Machine Code (aka MC) sub-project of LLVM was created to solve a number
of problems in the realm of assembly, disassembly, object file format handling,
and a number of other related areas that CPU instruction-set level tools work
in. It is a sub-project of LLVM which provides it with a number of advantages
over other compilers that do not have tightly integrated assembly-level tools.
For a gentle introduction, please see the <a
href="http://blog.llvm.org/2010/04/intro-to-llvm-mc-project.html">Intro to the
LLVM MC Project Blog Post</a>.
</p>
<p>2.8 status here</p>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="externalproj">External Open Source Projects Using LLVM 2.8</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_text">
<p>An exciting aspect of LLVM is that it is used as an enabling technology for
a lot of other language and tools projects. This section lists some of the
projects that have already been updated to work with LLVM 2.8.</p>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
<a name="whatsnew">What's New in LLVM 2.8?</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="orgchanges">LLVM Community Changes</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>In addition to changes to the code, between LLVM 2.7 and 2.8, a number of
organization changes have happened:
</p>
<ul>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="majorfeatures">Major New Features</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>LLVM 2.8 includes several major new capabilities:</p>
<ul>
<li>.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="coreimprovements">LLVM IR and Core Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>LLVM IR has several new features for better support of new targets and that
expose new optimization opportunities:</p>
<ul>
<li>LLVM 2.8 changes the internal order of operands in <a
href="http://llvm.org/doxygen/classllvm_1_1InvokeInst.html"><tt>InvokeInst</tt></a>
and <a href="http://llvm.org/doxygen/classllvm_1_1CallInst.html"><tt>CallInst</tt></a>.
To be portable across releases, resort to <tt>CallSite</tt> and the
high-level accessors, such as <tt>getCalledValue</tt> and <tt>setUnwindDest</tt>.
</li>
<li>
You can no longer pass use_iterators directly to cast<> (and similar), because
these routines tend to perform costly dereference operations more than once. You
have to dereference the iterators yourself and pass them in.
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="optimizer">Optimizer Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>In addition to a large array of minor performance tweaks and bug fixes, this
release includes a few major enhancements and additions to the optimizers:</p>
<ul>
<li></li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="executionengine">Interpreter and JIT Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<ul>
<li></li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="codegen">Target Independent 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>MachO writer works.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="x86">X86-32 and X86-64 Target Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>New features of the X86 target include:
</p>
<ul>
<li>The X86 backend now supports holding X87 floating point stack values
in registers across basic blocks, dramatically improving performance of code
that uses long double, and when targetting CPUs that don't support SSE.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="ARM">ARM Target Improvements</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>New features of the ARM target include:
</p>
<ul>
<li></li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="newapis">New Useful APIs</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>This release includes a number of new APIs that are used internally, which
may also be useful for external clients.
</p>
<ul>
<li></li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="otherimprovements">Other Improvements and New Features</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<p>Other miscellaneous 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 2.7, 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>
</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, FreeBSD and AuroraUX (and probably other unix-like
systems).</li>
<li>PowerPC and X86-based Mac OS X systems, running 10.4 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 x86 and AMD64 machines running Solaris 10, OpenSolaris 0906.</li>
<li>Alpha-based machines running Debian GNU/Linux.</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>
<ul>
<li>LLVM will not correctly compile on Solaris and/or OpenSolaris
using the stock GCC 3.x.x series 'out the box',
See: <a href="GettingStarted.html#brokengcc">Broken versions of GCC and other tools</a>.
However, A <a href="http://pkg.auroraux.org/GCC">Modern GCC Build</a>
for x86/x86-64 has been made available from the third party AuroraUX Project
that has been meticulously tested for bootstrapping LLVM &amp; Clang.</li>
</ul>
</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, Alpha, SPU, MIPS, PIC16, Blackfin, MSP430, SystemZ and MicroBlaze
backends are experimental.</li>
<li><tt>llc</tt> "<tt>-filetype=asm</tt>" (the default) is the only
supported value for this option. XXX Update me</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>Win64 code generation wasn't widely tested. Everything should work, but we
expect small issues to happen. Also, llvm-gcc cannot build the mingw64
runtime currently due to lack of support for the 'u' inline assembly
constraint and for X87 floating point inline assembly.</li>
<li>The X86-64 backend does not yet support the LLVM IR instruction
<tt>va_arg</tt>. Currently, front-ends support 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>
</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>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="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 <tt>llc</tt> or native compilers.</li>
<li>The C backend does not support all exception handling constructs.</li>
<li>The C backend does not support arbitrary precision integers.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ======================================================================= -->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="c-fe">Known problems with the llvm-gcc C and C++ front-end</a>
</div>
<div class="doc_text">
<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>
</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 <a href="http://llvm.org/bugs/">Bugzilla</a>. Please see the
tools/gfortran component for details.</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>.
This is due to lack of LLVM support for <tt>setjmp</tt>/<tt>longjmp</tt> style
exception handling, which is used internally by the compiler.
Workaround: configure with <tt>--disable-bootstrap</tt>.</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).
If the compiler is built with checks disabled then <a href="http://llvm.org/PR2010">c393010</a>
causes the compiler to go into an infinite loop, using up all system memory.</li>
<li>Some GCC specific Ada tests continue to crash the compiler.</li>
<li>The <tt>-E</tt> 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 <tt>-E</tt>.</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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