[llvm-dev] Status of the AVR backend

[Rui Ueyama via llvm-dev]

On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 11:13 PM, Dylan McKay via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> It’s been a while since the last update in November, so here’s another one
> Changes since November Close to Rust support
>
> A few people have been working on integrating the AVR backend into the
> Rust <https://www.rust-lang.org/> programming language. This has mostly
> been work on supporting LLVM 4.0
> <https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/37609>.
>
> Once the final LLVM 4.0 tag is made, we can update emscripten, integrate
> it into Rust, and then add a small amount of code to the compiler to enable
> support.
>
> Take a look at Jake Goulding’s avr-rust/arduino
> <https://github.com/avr-rust/arduino> project for a really nice proof of
> concept.
> Clang support
>
> At this point, you can compile some decently-sized programs directly to
> ELF object files. It is still necessary to use the GNU AVR linker because
> we don’t have any support for AVR inside the compiler-rt support library.
>
> On top of this, we need to add logic to Clang so that it passes the
> correct C runtime library (crt0, ctc1, ..) to the linker.
>
> In order to successfully compile the Arduino core library, we need to add
> support for the ‘weak’ linkage attribute, and support the ‘progmem’
> attribute for data that should reside in program flash memory.
> Experimental buildbot
>
> We’ve gained a buildbot here
> <http://lab.llvm.org:8014/builders/llvm-avr-linux> on the staging
> buildmaster. It does not send emails to anyone other than myself, but it
> will help keep the test suite green!
> Relax memory operation pass
>
> A pass was added in D27650 <https://reviews.llvm.org/D27650> that allows
> us to correctly emit loads/stores to addresses of the form ‘pointer+offset’
> where the offset is larger than 63 bytes.
>
> This would stop us from lowering functions which had more than 63 bytes of
> data on the stack.
> Next on the agenda LLVM linker support
>
> A long time ago we used to have a fork of LLD which added support for AVR
> ELF binaries.
>
> The stale repository is here <https://github.com/avr-llvm/lld>.
>
> Now that LLD is somewhat more stable, it would be really cool to see this
> picked up again.
>
You want to take a look at ELF/Target.cpp in which all
architecture-dependent code is written. You usually have to add a few
hundred lines of code to that file to support a new architecture.

I think one thing you'd find useful in LLD is that LLD is always a
cross-linker. Any LLD build supports all the architectures it supports.
There's no build-time configuration to enable/disable targets. So, once you
add a AVR support, you can use it from anywhere.

> Links
>
>    - A list of all AVR-related patches that have been comitted
>    <https://reviews.llvm.org/search/query/ZVuiT4mCLrl6/#R>
>    - All open bugs for the backend
>    <https://llvm.org/bugs/buglist.cgi?product=libraries&component=Backend%3A%20AVR&resolution=---&list_id=111982>
>
> ​
>
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>
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