[cfe-dev] [llvm-dev] Query about JIT

Sun May 12 22:55:55 PDT 2019

Dear cfe-dev mailing list,

I had posted earlier in this list with some queries about JIT. Thanks
Alexey and Mehdi for your help.

I have liberally borrowed from the provided clang-interpreter example and
have more or less managed to meet my objectives. Two concerns remain,
however:

1. I bundle the Clang/LLVM libraries (along with the modified code from
clang-interpreter) into a shared library and am able to invoke the JIT
functionality both statically and dynamically. However, the size of the
shared library is ~54 MB, which I feel is too large. Am I doing something
wrong, and is there a way to strip out unneeded bits and reduce the size?
Or, is this the price I have to pay for removing any runtime dependency on
Clang/LLVM?

2. This is more of a general JIT query: my current plan is to dump the
generated C code to a file and invoke clang on this file through the API. I
haven't tested out the performance implications of this yet, but wanted to
know if this is kosher. This method has the advantage that my interaction
with the clang API is quite coarse-grained as opposed to using (other)
finer-grained API calls.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Rajesh Jayaprakash
(https://github.com/shikantaza/plisp)

On Wed, Mar 13, 2019 at 2:56 PM Rajesh Jayaprakash <
rajesh.jayaprakash at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks Mehdi!
>
> Regards,
> Rajesh
>
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2019 at 2:42 PM Mehdi AMINI <joker.eph at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Rajesh,
>>
>> Adding the cfe-dev (Clang FrontEnd) mailing list as your question seems
>> to be more targeted towards clang (your input is C code if I understood
>> correctly).
>>
>> At the LLVM level, there is a (limited but "stable") C API here:
>> https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/tree/master/llvm/include/llvm-c
>> For the JIT, this file seems relevant:
>> https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/master/llvm/include/llvm-c/OrcBindings.h
>> But this assumes you get LLVM IR in the first place, and I don't know of
>> a C API for clang for this.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> --
>> Mehdi
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 7:05 AM Rajesh Jayaprakash via llvm-dev <
>> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Alexey,
>>>
>>> Thank you very much for your detailed reply, will look into the
>>> resources indicated. I'd like to avoid C++ if possible, let me see how it
>>> goes.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Rajesh Jayaprakash
>>>
>>> On Tue 12 Mar, 2019, 6:35 PM Sachkov, Alexey, <alexey.sachkov at intel.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Rajesh,
>>>>
>>>> If I understand correctly, libclang is a C interface to Clang features,
>>>> not LLVM. That means that you cannot get LLVM IR via libclang: The C
>>>> Interface to Clang provides a relatively small API that exposes facilities
>>>> for parsing source code into an abstract syntax tree (AST), loading
>>>> already-parsed ASTs, traversing the AST, associating physical source
>>>> locations with elements within the AST, and other facilities that support
>>>> Clang-based development tools.
>>>>
>>>> To get LLVM IR and perform JIT compilation you need to use C++ API of
>>>> Clang and LLVM.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Here is some links which might be helpful:
>>>>
>>>> * [cfe-dev] How to use clang and llvm for JIT, preferably via the C API
>>>>  http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2015-August/044869.html
>>>>
>>>> * [cfe-dev] Help on Generating LLVM Module from C++ file using
>>>> libClang
>>>> http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2017-November/056033.html
>>>>
>>>> * [LLVMdev] libclang JIT frontend
>>>> http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2013-October/066088.html
>>>>
>>>> * Generate assembly from C code in memory using libclang
>>>> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34828480/generate-assembly-from-c-code-in-memory-using-libclang
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> BTW, there is a library for translating OpenCL C source code into a
>>>> LLVM IR which features in-memory translation:
>>>>
>>>> * https://github.com/intel/opencl-clang
>>>> It is not suitable for performing the whole JIT compilation, but it is
>>>> used by https://github.com/intel/intel-graphics-compiler as a
>>>> front-end. Also I’m not sure that you will be able to use it as-is for your
>>>> purposes, but at least it can be used as an example
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *From:* llvm-dev [mailto:llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org] *On Behalf
>>>> Of *Rajesh Jayaprakash via llvm-dev
>>>> *Sent:* Friday, March 8, 2019 2:14 PM
>>>> *To:* llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
>>>> *Subject:* [llvm-dev] Query about JIT
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Dear llvm-dev list,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Apologies if this list is not the right venue for this query - suitable
>>>> redirection would be appreciated in that case.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I have a JIT use case that I'd like to know the best way to implement
>>>> using LLVM.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I am looking to migrate from the existing native compilation option
>>>> (Tiny C Compiler - TCC) for pLisp, a Lisp dialect and IDE.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> At present, the native compilation is done by converting the Lisp code
>>>> to C, storing the C code in a char buffer, and passing it to TCC
>>>> programmatically via the API provided. I get a function pointer in return,
>>>> which I store and invoke as needed.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Delving into the LLVM documentation, I found that one possible way to
>>>> achieve the same functionality in LLVM is to use clag/libclang to convert
>>>> the C source to LLVM IR, load this IR into the the JIT context and
>>>> (skipping some steps I'm yet to figure out) get the desired function
>>>> pointer.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Is this approach the right one? One issue I foresee is that libclang's
>>>> clang_parseTranslateUnit() function expects the C code to be from a file
>>>> (although the file can be in-memory), whereas in my case the C code needs
>>>> to be picked up from a char buffer - necessitating fmemopen(), etc.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for your assistance.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Rajesh Jayaprakash
>>>>
>>>> (https://github.com/shikantaza/plisp)
>>>>
>>>>
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>>
>
> --
> Regards,
> Rajesh
>
>

-- 
Regards,
Rajesh
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