[LLVMdev] Target independency using "opaque"? How to do it else?

[Johannes Schaub - litb]

Duncan Sands wrote:

> Hi Johannes,
> 
>> I'm writing a backend for our scriptlanguage compiler and I'm currently
>> writing an IR module for the runtime library that contains some support
>> routines called by generated code.
>>
>> The IR module contains calls to "malloc", which depend on the size of
>> "size_t". Since I don't know the target when writing the IR module for
>> the runtime library, I thought about using an "opaque" type instance in
>> place of "size_t". When loading the IR module, I would refine the
>> "opaque" to either i64 or i32, depending on which target I'm using.
> 
> you can inject a declaration for your own malloc function that always
> takes a 64 bit argument into the bitcode:
>    declare i8 *@litb_malloc(i64)
> When you know how big a pointer is on the target you can provide an
> appropriate
> body.  For example on a 32 bit machine you could inject:
> 
>    define i8 *@litb_malloc(i64 %s) {
>      %t = trunc i64 %s to i32
>      %m = call i8 *@malloc(i32 %t)
>      ret i8 *%m
>    }
> 
> Ciao, Duncan.

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. And it's small enough to not be a pain in 
the ass to inject it programmatically. I'm also using "opaque" in other 
places, and I wonder whether that's correct:

%envpad_ty = type opaque
%env_ty = type { 
   ; current save-point
   %savepoint_ty*, 
   ; target specific padding
   %envpad_ty
}

The above represents the global environment of my scripting runtime, of 
which I only access the first member directly from the IR code. I want to 
substitute "envpad_ty" with the appropriate array-of-char to fill the size 
of one env_ty. Is this the correct way to tackle that?