llvm dev - Dec 2017 - Parse LLVM IR using LLVM C API

Hi,

I'm writing a compiler and I am thinking of mixing LLVM IR inside the
source code I'm compiling. So user can write normal code and write some
functions using LLVM IR.

Is it possible to use LLVM C API to parse those sections of the source code
and convert them into `LLVMValueRef`s pointing to parsed functions?

Thanks,
Mahdi
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I assume you mean "use your own code to parse some text representation of
LLVM IR and then use the LLVM API to create the appropriate data
stuctures".

Certainly you can do that with C++ code. With the C API, I don't know.

But it's probably easier to use something like the parseAssemblyInto()
function in include/llvm/AsmParser/Parser.h. You pass it a memory buffer
containing IR text to be parsed, and a Module (possibly empty, possibly one
your compiler has already added things to) to insert the parsed items into.

That's in C++, of course, but you can make a wrapper and export your own
pure C interface to it if you want.

On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 6:53 PM, Mahdi Mohammadi via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm writing a compiler and I am thinking of mixing LLVM IR inside the
> source code I'm compiling. So user can write normal code and write some
> functions using LLVM IR.
>
> Is it possible to use LLVM C API to parse those sections of the source
> code and convert them into `LLVMValueRef`s pointing to parsed functions?
>
> Thanks,
> Mahdi
>
> _______________________________________________
> LLVM Developers mailing list
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
> http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
>
>
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On 8 Dec 2017, at 15:53, Mahdi Mohammadi via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at
lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> 
> I'm writing a compiler and I am thinking of mixing LLVM IR inside the
source code I'm compiling. So user can write normal code and write some
functions using LLVM IR.
Note that the text representation of LLVM IR is currently intended for debugging
and is not guaranteed to be stable.  If you’re using the C API, then I’d guess
that you want your compiler to work with multiple versions of LLVM, but it’s
likely that any code that embeds the text form of LLVM IR will be tied to a
specific compiler version (the auto-updater should work with the bitcode
representation, but is best-effort when it comes to the text version).

If you have some parts of your language’s runtime library that you want to write
directly in LLVM IR and don’t mind having to modify them them when you update
LLVM, then this might be a good idea, but exposing it to users is likely to
cause problems.

David

We have this feature for LDC the LLVM D Compiler[1] (although we use the C++
API).
This is the relevant code:
https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc/blob/master/gen/inlineir.cpp

Nic

[1]:https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc/

On 8 Dec 2017, at 11:53 pm, Mahdi Mohammadi via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at
lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:

Hi,

I'm writing a compiler and I am thinking of mixing LLVM IR inside the source
code I'm compiling. So user can write normal code and write some functions
using LLVM IR.

Is it possible to use LLVM C API to parse those sections of the source code and
convert them into `LLVMValueRef`s pointing to parsed functions?

Thanks,
Mahdi
_______________________________________________
LLVM Developers mailing list
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>
http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev

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