[LLVMdev] seeking advice

[Arno Bastenhof]

I recently subscribed to the LLVM and Clang developer mailing lists, and
earlier today read a message requesting advice on "Contributing to LLVM
Projects". I'm hoping to eventually get involved as well, but with my
situation being very different to that described in the referenced thread I
got the idea of solliciting advice seperately. If this is not the right
place to ask, though, then please let me know and ignore the remainder of
this message.

Right now, I only 'really' know Java for my current job, save for some
Prolog, Haskell and Coq that I picked up before during my linguistics
studies (specializing in categorial grammar, and having supplemented with
courses from CS and AI on logic and type theory). I thus still have a long
road ahead, already when it comes to just bare theory, let alone
implementation. The following is a detailed study plan that I have come up
with for my spare time that I think will last me for the next 1.5 years or
so (naturally to be supplemented with the LLVM documentation), and which I
would be very happy to obtain any feedback on.

Instead of beginning with C++, I rather started studying C from K&R and
(once finished) the book by Fraser and Hanson on LCC. Afterwards, I already
have a modest reading list prepared of some articles on SSA (see below)
which I hope to combine with a study of the LLVM IR. Based on these
readings, as a matter of exercise I can take what I learnt from LCC to
write a small compiler in C targeting the LLVM IR for, say, a subset of
Prolog. Ideally, I should reach this stage by the end of this year. While
far from 'done' with C, I suppose that at this point I can also proceed to
pick up some C++ (having in mind at least Accelerated C++ and the Effective
(Modern) C++ books, coupled perhaps with Modern C++ Design for template
metaprogramming), by which time I think I should be prepared to start
following some of the developments around Clang and start digging into its
code. All this, in turn, should keep me busy during the first half of the
next year at least. I hope, however, to also come to thoroughly understand
the LLVM backend, and I would suppose that, besides following literature on
compiler optimizations, going through a book or two on computer
architecture should give me a start to dig deeper into its source (thinking
currently of Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective). There will
surely never be any shortage of good books to read (in particular hoping to
also squeeze in Sedgewick's algorithms in C and a book on OS architecture
somewhere), but I hope all this at least should give me a good start from
which to start planning further, and hopefully eventually get involved
somehow. However, given my current state of knowledge and being limited to
my spare time, I'm guessing I'll be looking at at least five years or so to
reach a lower intermediate level understanding of most of the important
concepts involved.

As for the articles that I had in mind for coming to grips with the basics
of SSA, I came up with the following list, planning to first gradually work
my way up to an understanding of control- and data dependence.
1) Prosser '59: Applications of Boolean matrices to the analysis of flow
diagrams <Introduces the concept of dominators, I believe.>
2) Lowry & Medlock '69: Object code optimization <For further discussion of
the dominator concept.>
3) Allen '70: Control flow analysis
4) Allen & Cocke '76: A program data flow analysis procedure
5) Ferrante et al. '87: The program dependence graph and its use in
optimization
6) Rosen et al. '88: Global value numbers and redundant computations
7) Alpern et al. '88: Detecting equality of variables in programs
8) Cytron et al. '91: Efficiently computing static single assignment form
and the control dependence graph

Many thanks for taking the time to read through all this. I would be very
happy to receive any feedback on these plans, and again, if this was not
the right place to ask, then my apologies.


Kind regards,

Arno Bastenhof
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20150803/1674513d/attachment.html>