LLVM Techniques, Tips, and Best Practices Clang and Middle-End Libraries

LLVM is one of the most popular and powerful frameworks for creating programming language tools such as compilers, source analyzers, and dynamic execution runtime. With this book, you'll discover some of the most critical parts of LLVM and get hands-on using LLVM to build projects in no time.

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Learn how you can build the next big programming language, compiler, or source code analyzer using LLVM and Clang

Key Features

Explore Clang, LLVM’s middle-end and backend, in a pragmatic way
Develop your LLVM skillset and get to grips with a variety of common use cases
Engage with real-world LLVM development through various coding examples

Book DescriptionEvery programmer or engineer, at some point in their career, works with compilers to optimize their applications. Compilers convert a high-level programming language into low-level machine-executable code. LLVM provides the infrastructure, reusable libraries, and tools needed for developers to build their own compilers. With LLVM’s extensive set of tooling, you can effectively generate code for different backends as well as optimize them.

In this book, you’ll explore the LLVM compiler infrastructure and understand how to use it to solve different problems. You’ll start by looking at the structure and design philosophy of important components of LLVM and gradually move on to using Clang libraries to build tools that help you analyze high-level source code. As you advance, the book will show you how to process LLVM IR – a powerful way to transform and optimize the source program for various purposes. Equipped with this knowledge, you’ll be able to leverage LLVM and Clang to create a wide range of useful programming language tools, including compilers, interpreters, IDEs, and source code analyzers.

By the end of this LLVM book, you’ll have developed the skills to create powerful tools using the LLVM framework to overcome different real-world challenges.

What you will learn

Find out how LLVM’s build system works and how to reduce the building resource
Get to grips with running custom testing with LLVM’s LIT framework
Build different types of plugins and extensions for Clang
Customize Clang’s toolchain and compiler flags
Write LLVM passes for the new PassManager
Discover how to inspect and modify LLVM IR
Understand how to use LLVM’s profile-guided optimizations (PGO) framework
Create custom compiler sanitizers

Who this book is forThis book is for software engineers of all experience levels who work with LLVM. If you are an academic researcher, this book will help you learn useful LLVM skills in a short time and enable you to build your prototypes and projects quickly. Programming language enthusiasts will also find this book useful for building a new programming language with the help of LLVM.