llvm dev - Mar 2009 - [LLVMdev] Consumer ARM platform suitable for LLVM development?

Now that I have HLVM up and running on x86 and x64 I am interested in testing 
it out on an ARM in preparation for their imminent world domination. I 
believe LLVM already has excellent support for the ARM thanks to Apple's 
ARM-based products. However, I'd really like an ARM-based consumer device 
suitable for developing and testing HLVM on, rather than using a cross 
compiler and uploading to an embedded device like a phone or lab equipment 
like a beagle board.

Has anyone tried LLVM on one of the ARM-based netbooks like a Pandora, Touch 
Book or maybe some pre-release Apple swankiness?

-- 
Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Jon Harrop <jon at ffconsultancy.com>
wrote:
> Now that I have HLVM up and running on x86 and x64 I am interested in
> testing
> it out on an ARM in preparation for their imminent world domination. I
> believe LLVM already has excellent support for the ARM thanks to
Apple's
> ARM-based products. However, I'd really like an ARM-based consumer
device
> suitable for developing and testing HLVM on, rather than using a cross
> compiler and uploading to an embedded device like a phone or lab equipment
> like a beagle board.
>
> Has anyone tried LLVM on one of the ARM-based netbooks like a Pandora,
> Touch
> Book or maybe some pre-release Apple swankiness?

Before you commit to a specific hardware device, you can also prototype with
an ARM emulator, such as Qemu.

The problem I've had is building an LLVM cross-compiler from Linux/x86 to
Linux/ARM (as has another llvm-dev poster).  Someone mentioned to me
off-list that he managed to get it to build, but I haven't been able to
reproduce the build using his instructions (I'll post my results in another
thread).

Building LLVM _inside_ Qemu is rather slow and painful -- I've tried it once
and didn't get far with it.  However, since LLVM + LLVM-GCC are shipped as
part of the iPhone SDK, at least Darwin/x86 -> Darwin/ARM cross is possible.

Misha
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
<http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20090311/b0d9b62c/attachment.html>

On Mar 11, 2009, at 9:44 PM, Misha Brukman wrote:
> The problem I've had is building an LLVM cross-compiler from Linux/ 
> x86 to Linux/ARM (as has another llvm-dev poster).  Someone  
> mentioned to me off-list that he managed to get it to build, but I  
> haven't been able to reproduce the build using his instructions  
> (I'll post my results in another thread).
I've been successfully experimenting with an arm-softfloat-linux-gnu  
cross-compiler at the time of llvm 2.1. The easiest way to get this  
working is to use Dan Kegel's crosstool to build a regular gcc  
toolchain. This will give you binutils, libgcc, and glibc, which you  
will need anyway.

Building llvm-gcc was relatively painless. The only problem I've  
encountered was that my target had no hardware floating point support  
and the endianess for the softfloat implementation (libgcc) differed  
from integer endianess, which required some patches at the llvm side.  
I have not checked if this is still necessary. If you run into the  
same problems, I would be happy to share the patch (which I have  
updated to llvm 2.4 at some point).

-
Dietmar

[1] http://www.kegel.com/crosstool/


---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dietmar Ebner
CD Laboratory - Compilation Techniques for Embedded Processors
Institut fuer Computersprachen  E: ebner at complang.tuwien.ac.at
Technische Universitaet Wien    T: (+431) 58801-58521
Argentinierstrasse 8 / E1851    F: (+431) 58801-18598
1040 Wien, Austria              W: www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/cd/ebner