LLVM Image Activator

[Julian Elischer]

On 1/6/13 10:02 AM, Nathan Whitehorn wrote:
> Having LLVM/clang in the base system lets us do some interesting things
> that we couldn't do with GCC. One is that LLVM ships with a JIT for LLVM
> IR as well as components of a toolchain for it (this is what Google's
> pNACL uses) and that you can end up producing binary files that are in
> IR instead of native code. The IR isn't really cross-platform, but does
> let you do CPU-specific optimizations when executed by the JIT, etc.
>
> The attached patch causes the LLVM JIT (lli) to be built by default
> (adding ~20 seconds to buildworld on my five-year-old laptop) and adds a
> kernel image activator that invokes it when passed LLVM bitcode files.
> It's not completely finished (see the XXX comment in the middle), but it
> does work, as follows:
>
> $ clang -emit-llvm -c -o hw.ll hw.c
> $ file hw.ll
> hw.ll: LLVM bitcode
> $ lli hw.ll
> Hello world!
> $ chmod a+x hw.ll
> $ ./hw.ll
> Hello world!
> $
>
> Is there any interest in having features like this? It seems like this
> could provides some interesting possibilities for us and nice
> integration from having imported clang into base.
> -Nathan

sounds like a nice idea.
I'd put it in if you can find a few other supporters.. (especially 
ones who can help with maintenance.

>
>
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