llvm dev - Oct 2014 - [LLVMdev] Proposal: bindings for the Go programming language

Hi all,

I'd like to propose that we add an official set of Go bindings to the LLVM
project. These bindings are based on the existing "gollvm" project
[1]. (Note
that all contributors to the gollvm project have agreed to relicense their
changes under the LLVM license and submit them to the LLVM project.) The
bindings would live in the LLVM tree under the bindings/go directory.

One thing that I'd like to see come out of this is the contribution of an
official Go frontend to the project, based on the existing llgo project [2]
which uses these bindings.

I am also submitting a patch with the initial version of the code to
llvm-commits.

For those familiar with Go, here are a few more details to explain how
clients would use the bindings and how they would be integrated with LLVM.

Clients would use a package import path that looks like this:

llvm.org/llvm/bindings/go/llvm

or for releases:

llvm.org/llvm.v36/bindings/go/llvm

Importing this path would cause 'go get' to check out LLVM plus the
bindings
from SVN using the mechanism described in [3]. We would check index.html
files into the www repository to support this.

There doesn't seem to be a good way to build complex C++ projects such as
LLVM
using 'go get', so there is a script (update_llvm.sh) that builds LLVM
and
configures the package tree with the appropriate compiler/linker flags. This
is essentially the approach that I've taken with the existing gollvm
project,
but now the script uses the copy of LLVM in the parent directory instead of
checking one out.

There is also a mechanism (independent of how Go users would use the
package with 'go get') to test that the bindings build and pass their
test
suite. This would be done as part of the 'check' target if the user has
Go
installed. The intention is that there would be at least one build bot set
up with Go installed to notify us when the bindings break.

Because there isn't normally a separate build step for Go libraries (a Go
library is normally built as a side effect of building an executable that
uses it), the bindings would not be built as part of the 'all' target,
as this
would slow down the build and be redundant with work done later by
'check'.

Comments appreciated.

Thanks,
-- 
Peter

[1] https://github.com/go-llvm/llvm
[2] https://github.com/go-llvm/llgo
[3] https://golang.org/cmd/go/#hdr-Remote_import_paths

On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 12:34 AM, Peter Collingbourne <peter at pcc.me.uk>
wrote:
> There is also a mechanism (independent of how Go users would use the
> package with 'go get') to test that the bindings build and pass
their test
> suite. This would be done as part of the 'check' target if the user
has Go
> installed. The intention is that there would be at least one build bot set
> up with Go installed to notify us when the bindings break.
Please let me know what are the required packages on a recent Ubuntu
or Debian and we can arrange this testing on my buildbots.

Dmitri

-- 
main(i,j){for(i=2;;i++){for(j=2;j<i;j++){if(!(i%j)){j=0;break;}}if
(j){printf("%d\n",i);}}} /*Dmitri Gribenko <gribozavr at
gmail.com>*/

On Thu, Oct 09, 2014 at 01:42:49AM +0100, Dmitri Gribenko
wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 12:34 AM, Peter Collingbourne <peter at
pcc.me.uk> wrote:
> > There is also a mechanism (independent of how Go users would use the
> > package with 'go get') to test that the bindings build and
pass their test
> > suite. This would be done as part of the 'check' target if the
user has Go
> > installed. The intention is that there would be at least one build bot
set
> > up with Go installed to notify us when the bindings break.
> 
> Please let me know what are the required packages on a recent Ubuntu
> or Debian and we can arrange this testing on my buildbots.
I think the only package you will need is 'golang', version 1.2 or above
(or
'2:1.2' or above in the Debian version numbering scheme).

Thanks,
-- 
Peter

On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 4:34 PM, Peter Collingbourne <peter at pcc.me.uk>
wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'd like to propose that we add an official set of Go bindings to the
LLVM
> project. These bindings are based on the existing "gollvm"
project [1].
> (Note
> that all contributors to the gollvm project have agreed to relicense their
> changes under the LLVM license and submit them to the LLVM project.) The
> bindings would live in the LLVM tree under the bindings/go directory.
>
> One thing that I'd like to see come out of this is the contribution of
an
> official Go frontend to the project, based on the existing llgo project [2]
> which uses these bindings.
>
> I am also submitting a patch with the initial version of the code to
> llvm-commits.
>
Peter, I'm not hearing any really serious concerns about the overall
strategy here (provided that we've gotten a good resolution on the issue
raised by Andrew Wilkins, but it sounds like that's OK).

I'm going to look at reviewing the patches, and I think if no one shouts
about a problem, you should move forward with landing this next week
(provided the patch review is done, maybe the review takes longer).

I just want to say I'm really excited about this and thanks for doing the
leg-work on getting things together.
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