[LLVMdev] 2.2 garbage collector questions

Jon Harrop
Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:14:23 -0000

On Tuesday 05 February 2008 12:40:20 thomas weidner
wrote:
> I wanted to roll out my own lisp, and maybe use some library code from
> existing lisps (think of loop or format). Adding an LLVM backend to an
> existing lisp implementation is a nice idea, but currently not planned.

I am also interested in implementing functional programming languages using
LLVM. Although I'm only interested in statically typed ones, there is a lot
of work that can be shared.

LLVM currently lacks working examples demonstrating the use of garbage
collection and exceptions, so that would be a good first port of call. Then
we can worry about an intermediate representation that supports closures.

If you are familiar with functional programming and, in particular, its
benefits in the context of compiler work then you might like to use Gordon's
OCaml bindings to LLVM that are bundled with LLVM. They are very easy to use
and will make subsequent work vastly easier than trying to write everything
in C++.

--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.