[llvm-announce] LLVM 2.8 Release!

[Chris Lattner]

Hi LLVM Friends, Fans, Followers and Fanatics,

LLVM 2.8 is live! You can download it here:
http://llvm.org/releases/ and read about it here:
http://llvm.org/releases/2.8/docs/ReleaseNotes.html

This release includes approximately 6 months of development that provide
major enhancements and new features over the LLVM 2.7 release.  LLVM 2.8
includes broad improvements in the core LLVM project and notably
includes major improvements to Clang C++ support (which is now feature
complete and quite usable).  In addition (and though they are not
included as part of the 2.8 release) two major new subprojects have
joined the LLVM project: libc++ and LLDB.

libc++ is a brand new implementation of the C++ standard library,
designed from the ground up for high performance and to support C++'0x
(when the standard is finalized).  While primarily aimed to work with
Clang++, libc++ is designed to be portable to other compilers as well.
Please see: http://libcxx.llvm.org/ for more information.

LLDB is a brand new modular debugger infrastructure which heavily builds
on libraries from LLVM and Clang (such as the Clang parser, the LLVM
disassemblers, the JIT compiler, etc).  In addition to being built as a
set of reusable libraries like LLVM, LLDB aims for extremely high
performance when debugging large applications as well as being highly
scriptable.  Please see: http://lldb.llvm.org/ for more information.

The new features in LLVM 2.8 are broad and covered in depth by the
release notes but here are some major additions to give a flavor for the
improvements: a drop-in system assembler (currently supports MachO
targets with ELF and COFF in development), support for writing .o files
directly from the compiler, an ARM disassembler, extensive ARM codegen
improvements, better support for debugging optimized code, much better
performance for X87 floating point, ARM tailcall support, and much much
more.

Another exciting aspect to see is the vibrant community that uses LLVM
technologies in various ways.  The release notes list 14 external
projects that have already updated to work with LLVM 2.8, giving a
sampling of the diversity and breadth of the community.  If you are
interested in discussing LLVM, a good forum is the annual LLVM Developer
Meeting and this years meeting is scheduled for November 4th.  If you're
interested in attending, please sign up for the mailing list:
http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvm-devmeeting

This release would not be possible without our volunteer release team.
Thanks to Bill Wendling, Pawel Worach, Nick Lewycky, Duncan Sands,
Anton Korobeynikov, Edwin Török, Douglas do Couto Teixeira, and Tanya
Lattner for their work to qualify and shepherd the release.  If you
have questions or comments about this release, please contact the LLVMdev
mailing list!  Onward to 2.9!

-Chris

LLVM 2.7 Release Announcement:
http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvm-announce/2010-April/000034.html