llvm dev - Aug 2009 - [LLVMdev] asmwriting times (was Re: LLVMContext: Suggestions for API Changes)

On Monday 24 August 2009 23:27, Albert Graef wrote:
> Thank you also for the hint about bitcode reading/writing. I'm aware of
> this, but I actually prefer the .ll output because it's human-readable,
> which is great for debugging purposes. I might add a bitcode writer some
> time, but it's not a high priority for me right now.
Isn't there a tool to turn bitcode into human readable text? I have been 
reading about the internals of LLVM lately (I'm planning on making a new 
backend) and the whole infrastructure reminds me a lot of the Amsterdam 
Compiler Kit (ACK). They had a program to turn binary EM code into ASCII, 
making it easy to dump the output to |more or less during debugging.

--Ivo

On Aug 24, 2009, at 3:05 PMPDT, Ivo wrote:
> On Monday 24 August 2009 23:27, Albert Graef wrote:
>> Thank you also for the hint about bitcode reading/writing. I'm  
>> aware of
>> this, but I actually prefer the .ll output because it's human- 
>> readable,
>> which is great for debugging purposes. I might add a bitcode writer  
>> some
>> time, but it's not a high priority for me right now.
>
> Isn't there a tool to turn bitcode into human readable text? I have  
> been
> reading about the internals of LLVM lately (I'm planning on making a  
> new
> backend) and the whole infrastructure reminds me a lot of the  
> Amsterdam
> Compiler Kit (ACK). They had a program to turn binary EM code into  
> ASCII,
> making it easy to dump the output to |more or less during debugging.
Yes, llvm-dis is documented on the LLVM web site.  Of course it does  
not run in zero time, which may be a consideration.

On Aug 24, 2009, at 3:05 PM, Ivo wrote:
> On Monday 24 August 2009 23:27, Albert Graef wrote:
>> Thank you also for the hint about bitcode reading/writing. I'm  
>> aware of
>> this, but I actually prefer the .ll output because it's human- 
>> readable,
>> which is great for debugging purposes. I might add a bitcode writer  
>> some
>> time, but it's not a high priority for me right now.
>
> Isn't there a tool to turn bitcode into human readable text? I have  
> been
> reading about the internals of LLVM lately (I'm planning on making a  
> new
> backend) and the whole infrastructure reminds me a lot of the  
> Amsterdam
> Compiler Kit (ACK). They had a program to turn binary EM code into  
> ASCII,
> making it easy to dump the output to |more or less during debugging.
>
There's the llvm disassembler (llvm-dis), which works nicely. Albert,  
would that work for you? Might be a way to get a bit more performance  
with a mild convenience cost (needing to run the disassembler in order  
to examine IR) during debugging.

-Jim

Jim Grosbach wrote:
> There's the llvm disassembler (llvm-dis), which works nicely. Albert,  
> would that work for you? Might be a way to get a bit more performance  
> with a mild convenience cost (needing to run the disassembler in order  
> to examine IR) during debugging.
Well, now that the performance bug in my code is solved, the speed of
assembler generation is fine with me. Most Pure users don't do this
anyway, either they just run their scripts in the interpreter or compile
them to an executable or object file. For the latter, bitcode would
indeed make things faster. As I said, I'm probably going to add that
some time, but I'm still procrastinating so that maybe I wake up one day
and find that the .o writer is already finished, so I can just use that
instead. ;-)

Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr.Graef at t-online.de, ag at muwiinfa.geschichte.uni-mainz.de
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag