llvm dev - May 2017 - Email list just for front end developers?

Howdy!

I've noticed that requests for help by people like me who are
developing front ends are often lost in the noise in the llvm-dev
list. Although LLVM is a wonderful and very productive framework, I've
found that getting help on my front end has been very difficult, and
learning necessary detail about the APIs and the like is often very,
very challenging.

Perhaps it would be good to set up a mailing list just for front end
developers to provide mutual assistance to one another? That way we
would not have to bother people working on optimizers or the back end
with our stupid beginner questions, but there would still be a place
to go to get assistance.

It might also be nice to have a Wiki. I've learned a bunch of things
about how to use the APIs over the last weeks as I've been fighting
with the code, but I don't really have any good place to share the
information I've learned with other people, so others can't learn
from my experience. Some of the things I figured out took hours of
work to figure out, and it would be nice to document them so other
people don't have to do the same thing.

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com

On Sat, May 6, 2017 at 11:07 PM, Perry E. Metzger via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> Howdy!
>
> I've noticed that requests for help by people like me who are
> developing front ends are often lost in the noise in the llvm-dev
> list. Although LLVM is a wonderful and very productive framework, I've
> found that getting help on my front end has been very difficult, and
> learning necessary detail about the APIs and the like is often very,
> very challenging.
>
> Perhaps it would be good to set up a mailing list just for front end
> developers to provide mutual assistance to one another?

I'm not sure if by front-end you mean like programming language side of
things, but have you seen cfe-dev?
http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/
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On Sat, 6 May 2017 23:11:16 +0800 C Bergström
<cbergstrom at pathscale.com> wrote:
> On Sat, May 6, 2017 at 11:07 PM, Perry E. Metzger via llvm-dev <
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> 
> > Howdy!
> >
> > I've noticed that requests for help by people like me who are
> > developing front ends are often lost in the noise in the llvm-dev
> > list. Although LLVM is a wonderful and very productive framework,
> > I've found that getting help on my front end has been very
> > difficult, and learning necessary detail about the APIs and the
> > like is often very, very challenging.
> >
> > Perhaps it would be good to set up a mailing list just for front
> > end developers to provide mutual assistance to one another?  
> 
> 
> I'm not sure if by front-end you mean like programming language
> side of things,
A front end is a translator from some programming language
(everything from Julia to C++ to Haskell to Rust to dozens of others)
into the LLVM IR.
> but have you seen cfe-dev?
> http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/
That's specific to the clang front end.

There are a lot of people out there writing front ends for other
programming languages than C and C++ using LLVM (as I'm sure everyone
is well aware). I'm writing one myself right now as part of my
research.

People working on front ends typically don't really know everything
about the innards of LLVM, and thanks to LLVM's very nicely designed
architecture, we don't need to, we mostly need to know how to
generate IR and hook up to the rest of the system. We're more like
users than developers of LLVM itself, and yet our questions tend to
be quite technical since much of the API is not as well documented as
one might like.

Having a place dedicated to mutual aid among front end developers
(and of course assistance from anyone else who is willing to answer
questions) would be nice.

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com

Hi Perry,
> I've noticed that requests for help by people like me who are
developing front ends are often lost in the noise in the llvm-dev list. Although
LLVM is a wonderful and very productive framework, I’ve found that getting help
on my front end has been very difficult, and learning necessary detail about the
APIs and the like is often very, very challenging. Perhaps it would be good to
set up a mailing list just for front end developers to provide mutual assistance
to one another?

I think that it would be fine to post such questions on llvm-dev; if we tag them
with, say [frontend-dev], then people that aren’t interested can filter them out
easily enough. This would have the effect of allowing us to have a “separate”
mailing list/community while *also* having the benefit of not fragmenting the
mailing list.
>  That way we would not have to bother people working on optimizers or the
back end with our stupid beginner questions, but there would still be a place to
go to get assistance.
People shouldn’t be worried about asking beginner questions. Maybe we can tag
beginner questions with [beginner] as well? That way people interested in
helping beginners can quickly find such questions as well. (It would also
probably increase the confidence of newcomers posting on the list.)

We could even add a list of standard tags to the mailing list pages. For
example, https://lists.llvm.org/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
<https://lists.llvm.org/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev> could also include a
list of common tags to add to emails.
> It might also be nice to have a Wiki. I've learned a bunch of things
about how to use the APIs over the last weeks as I've been fighting with the
code, but I don't really have any good place to share the information
I've learned with other people, so others can't learn from my
experience. Some of the things I figured out took hours of work to figure out,
and it would be nice to document them so other people don't have to do the
same thing.
Please write down everything that confuses you! Even write out a blog post or
something! I’d personally be very interested in seeing what you’ve
learned/what’s confused you.

- Jessica 
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On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 1:46 PM, Jessica Paquette via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> Hi Perry,
>
> I've noticed that requests for help by people like me who are
developing
> front ends are often lost in the noise in the llvm-dev list. Although LLVM
> is a wonderful and very productive framework, I’ve found that getting help
> on my front end has been very difficult, and learning necessary detail
> about the APIs and the like is often very, very challenging. Perhaps it
> would be good to set up a mailing list just for front end developers to
> provide mutual assistance to one another?
>
>
> I think that it would be fine to post such questions on llvm-dev; if we
> tag them with, say [frontend-dev], then people that aren’t interested can
> filter them out easily enough. This would have the effect of allowing us to
> have a “separate” mailing list/community while *also* having the benefit of
> not fragmenting the mailing list.
>
Using tags is a really good idea! For example, lld and compiler-rt use tags
to differentiate themselves on the llvm mailing lists, and there's a lot of
benefit to not having the mailing list fragmented.

-- Sean Silva

>
>  That way we would not have to bother people working on optimizers or the
> back end with our stupid beginner questions, but there would still be a
> place to go to get assistance.
>
>
> People shouldn’t be worried about asking beginner questions. Maybe we can
> tag beginner questions with [beginner] as well? That way people interested
> in helping beginners can quickly find such questions as well. (It would
> also probably increase the confidence of newcomers posting on the list.)
>
> We could even add a list of standard tags to the mailing list pages. For
> example, https://lists.llvm.org/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev could also
> include a list of common tags to add to emails.
>
> It might also be nice to have a Wiki. I've learned a bunch of things
about
> how to use the APIs over the last weeks as I've been fighting with the
> code, but I don't really have any good place to share the information
I've
> learned with other people, so others can't learn from my experience.
Some
> of the things I figured out took hours of work to figure out, and it would
> be nice to document them so other people don't have to do the same
thing.
>
>
> Please write down everything that confuses you! Even write out a blog post
> or something! I’d personally be very interested in seeing what you’ve
> learned/what’s confused you.
>
> - Jessica
>
> _______________________________________________
> LLVM Developers mailing list
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
> http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
>
>
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