The main concern I have is that Windows is so different from
everything else that there is a high likelihood of decisions being
baked in early on that make things very difficult for people to come
along later and contribute a Windows implementation. This happened
with sanitizers for example (lack of support for weak functions on
Windows), LLDB (posix api calls scattered throughout the codebase),
and I worry with libc it will be even more difficult to correctly
design the abstraction because we have to deal with executable file
format, syscalls, operating system loaders, and various linkage
models.
The most immediate thing I think we will run into is that you
mentioned wanting this to take shape as something that sits in between
system libc and application. Given that Windows' libc and other
versions of libc are so different, I expect this to lead to some
interesting problems.
Can you elaborate more on how you envision this working with llvm libc
in between application and system libc?
On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 4:20 PM Siva Chandra <sivachandra at google.com>
wrote:>
> On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 3:43 PM Zachary Turner <zturner at
roblox.com> wrote:
>>
>> What do you expect the support for Windows to be? Certainly, I
don't
>> expect you to provide Windows support personally if you don't need
it,
>> but given that LLVM supports Windows, it should at least be done in
>> such a way that the design lends itself to interested parties
>> contributing Windows support.
>
>
> We are not going to disallow support for an item/features we do not plan to
implement ourselves. Contributions will be welcome.
>
> As I have mentioned in another email, we really want to develop everything
in a "as a library" fashion so that adding support for new
items/features isn't blocked by design.
>
>>
>> Currently clang-cl has several dependencies on having a Visual Studio
>> installation present on your machine, and one of these is because to
>> provide an implementation of the CRT (i.e. libc). So having a libc
>> implementation which supports Windows and is compatible with MSVCRT
>> would be useful for people using clang on Windows as well.
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 3:38 PM Jake Ehrlich via llvm-dev
>> <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > disclaimer: I work at Google so don't take my +1 as an
independent vote forward.
>> >
>> > We would like to use this on Fuchsia and I am particularly
interested in creating a dynamic linking library for ELF with Roland
McGrath's guidance. We spoke about creating a library for writing dynamic
linkers internally and I don't see why this can't be upstreamed.
>> >
>> > On Fuchsia we critically need support for AArch64; What do you
expect to be architecture dependent? I struggled to think of where the
architecture and not the operating system was the issue.
>> >
>> > On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 3:23 PM Siva Chandra via llvm-dev
<llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hello LLVM Developers,
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Within Google, we have a growing range of needs that existing
libc implementations don't quite address. This is pushing us to start
working on a new libc implementation.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Informal conversations with others within the LLVM community
has told us that a libc in LLVM is actually a broader need, and we are
increasingly consolidating our toolchains around LLVM. Hence, we wanted to see
if the LLVM project would be interested in us developing this upstream as part
of the project.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> To be very clear: we don't expect our needs to exactly
match everyone else's -- part of our impetus is to simplify things wherever
we can, and that may not quite match what others want in a libc. That said, we
do believe that the effort will still be directly beneficial and usable for the
broader LLVM community, and may serve as a starting point for others in the
community to flesh out an increasingly complete set of libc functionality.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> We are still in the early stages, but we do have some
high-level goals and guiding principles of the initial scope we are interested
in pursuing:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> The project should mesh with the "as a library"
philosophy of the LLVM project: even though "the C Standard Library"
is nominally "a library," most implementations are, in practice, quite
monolithic.
>> >>
>> >> The libc should support static non-PIE and static-PIE linking.
This means, providing the CRT (the C runtime) and a PIE loader for static
non-PIE and static-PIE linked executables.
>> >>
>> >> If there is a specification, we should follow it. The scope
that we need includes most of the C Standard Library; POSIX additions; and some
necessary, system-specific extensions. This does not mean we should (or can)
follow the entire specification -- there will be some parts which simply
aren't worth implementing, and some parts which cannot be safely used in
modern coding practice.
>> >>
>> >> Vendor extensions must be considered very carefully, and only
admitted when necessary. Similar to Clang and libc++, it does seem inevitable
that we will need to provide some level of compatibility with other vendors'
extensions.
>> >>
>> >> The project should be an exemplar of developing with LLVM
tooling. Two examples are fuzz testing from the start, and sanitizer-supported
testing.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> There are also few areas which we do not intend to invest in
at this point:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Implement dynamic loading and linking support.
>> >>
>> >> Support for more architectures (we'll start with just
x86-64 for simplicity).
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> For these areas, the community is of course free to
contribute. Our hope is that, preserving the "as a library" design
philosophy will make such extensions easy, and allow retaining the simplicity
when these features aren't needed.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> We intend to build the new libc in a gradual manner. To begin
with, the new libc will be a layer sitting between the application and the
system libc. Eventually, when the implementation is sufficiently complete, it
will be able to replace the system libc at least for some use cases and
contexts.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> So, what do you think about incorporating this new libc under
the LLVM project?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Thank you,
>> >>
>> >> Siva Chandra and the rest of the Google LLVM contributors
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> LLVM Developers mailing list
>> >> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
>> >> https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
>> > https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev