llvm dev - Oct 2008 - [LLVMdev] LLVM as compiler course infrastructure - thanks!

Charles Fischer and I, at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, have 
adapted our CS department's graduate compilers course to use LLVM. We've
found it quite commodious, and a vast improvement on the system we'd 
been using previously.

So, first of all, to the LLVM devs - thanks many times over for making 
LLVM as good as it is. I admit that I haven't seen many, but LLVM is 
easily the least horrible compilation system I've ever worked with. :)

Also, a question: about how much work do you suspect is required to make 
`llc` dynamically pluggable in a manner similar to `opt`? If ... someone 
... was to do this plumbing in a reasonable way, would it likely get 
pulled up into a later version?

If you're interested, you can have a look at the kinds of assignments 
we're doing with LLVM here:

http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~fischer/cs701.f08/asg2.llvm.html
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~fischer/cs701.f08/proj3.llvm.html

Thanks again,
- Matt Elder

Matt,

I've exchanged email with Chuck and I'm glad to hear your experience  
with LLVM for your class has been positive.  Since the project due  
date is past, I'd be interested to hear how you think the students  
found working with LLVM -- was it hard or easy to learn, and what  
parts were the most difficult.  We can take that discussion off list  
('reply' will go to llvmdev by default).

I have a collection of course projects for both an introductory and an  
advanced compiler class that use LLVM.  I am interested in collecting  
materials for additional projects that can be made available for other  
faculty.  If you are willing to contribute your project materials,  
along with a little help to make it usable by others, I would love to  
be able to include it in my collection.

Regards,

--Vikram
Associate Professor, Computer Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
http://llvm.org/~vadve



On Oct 27, 2008, at 6:03 PM, Matt Elder wrote:
> Charles Fischer and I, at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, have
> adapted our CS department's graduate compilers course to use LLVM.  
> We've
> found it quite commodious, and a vast improvement on the system we'd
> been using previously.
>
> So, first of all, to the LLVM devs - thanks many times over for making
> LLVM as good as it is. I admit that I haven't seen many, but LLVM is
> easily the least horrible compilation system I've ever worked with. :)
>
> Also, a question: about how much work do you suspect is required to  
> make
> `llc` dynamically pluggable in a manner similar to `opt`? If ...  
> someone
> ... was to do this plumbing in a reasonable way, would it likely get
> pulled up into a later version?
>
> If you're interested, you can have a look at the kinds of assignments
> we're doing with LLVM here:
>
> http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~fischer/cs701.f08/asg2.llvm.html
> http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~fischer/cs701.f08/proj3.llvm.html
>
> Thanks again,
> - Matt Elder
> _______________________________________________
> LLVM Developers mailing list
> LLVMdev at cs.uiuc.edu         http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu
> http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev

On Oct 27, 2008, at 19:03, Matt Elder wrote:
> Also, a question: about how much work do you suspect is required to  
> make `llc` dynamically pluggable in a manner similar to `opt`?  
> If ... someone ... was to do this plumbing in a reasonable way,  
> would it likely get pulled up into a later version?
You can use llc -load plugin.so to load codegen or GC modules today.

— Gordon