[LLVMdev] Integer questions

[OvermindDL1]

On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 12:08 PM, Dan Gohman <gohman at apple.com> wrote:
> FYI, there is one other issue here, PR2660. While codegen in
> general can handle types like i256, individual targets don't always
> have calling convention rules to cover them. For example, returning
> an i128 on x86-32 or an i256 on x86-64 doesn't doesn't fit in the
> registers designated for returning values on those targets.

I am mostly just interested in x86 (32-bit and 64-bit) based systems,
so it would choke?  And how would it choke (exception thrown, some
getlasterror style message passing, or what?).  To ask bluntly, I
would need to do bignum arithmetic in my side, rather then letting
LLVM do it (since the backend would most likely not do it)?

Has anyone thought about putting bignum's inside LLVM itself, LLVM
would be able to generate the best things possible for a given system,
and I do not mean bignum like some arbitrary sized number ala
Python/Erlang/etc. number, some static sized integer would be best for
my use, i2048 for example, although if there were an arbitrary length
version I would put that in the language as well.

Which I guess I should also ask about, how does LLVM do error handling
for when something cannot be compiled for whatever reason?