[flang-dev] Flang driver - next steps

Sun Oct 3 05:53:41 PDT 2021

Thanks for working on this, Andrzej.

Eventually, we'll need to be able to specify whether to generate debug information, and we'll need an option for that.

Also, I don't understand why we have two drivers, one for the compiler and another for the front end which is invoked by the "-fc1" option.  Are we planning to simplify this in the future?

Pete

-----Original Message-----
From: flang-dev <flang-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org> On Behalf Of Andrzej Warzynski via flang-dev
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2021 8:06 AM
To: via flang-dev <flang-dev at lists.llvm.org>
Subject: [flang-dev] Flang driver - next steps

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Hello,

[Flang == "LLVM Flang"]

Until recently we were focusing on replacing `f18` (the old driver) with `flang-new`, the new driver. This was completed in [1]. The natural next step is to add support for code-generation and linking phases. Although we have been discussing most of this in our community calls, not everyone has been able to attend them. Here's a quick overview and some open questions.

# *Code generation*
This will almost entirely be implemented inside the frontend driver (i.e. llvm-project/flang). It will support the following stages:
   1. ParseTree --> MLIR
   2. MLIR --> LLVM IR
   3. LLVM IR --> assembly/object code
This might be better expressed in terms of compiler options. Basically, we plan to add the following options to the frontend driver:
   * -emit-mlir (ParseTree --> MLIR)
   * -emit-llvm (ParseTree --> MLIR --> LLVM IR)
   * -emit-obj (ParseTree --> MLIR LLVM IR --> object code)
   * -S (ParseTree --> MLIR --> LLVM IR --> assembly)
   * -save-temps/-save-temps=<value>
   * --target=<value>
   * -print-target-triple
   * -print-targets
Do you see any key code-generation related options missing here? We would like to keep this list short and focus on the bare minimum that will best inform the design. Note that adding these options will lead to some duplication in implementation _and_ functionality between `flang-new -fc1` and `bbc`/`tco`. We will need to make sure that these tools stay in sync and that the level of testing for all is similar.

This work has already started and a patch implementing `-emit-mlir` is currently under review [2]. Note that we are only able to work on the above in the `fir-dev` branch of f18-llvm-project [3].

# *Linking*
This phase will be managed by `clangDriver`, so it will likely require some changes there. Compared to Clang, we do have one additional intermediate representation to support (MLIR). We may want to/need to make `clangDriver` aware of it. Otherwise, do you see anything that we might be missing here? Or any specific options that may require extra work within LLVM Flang?

We have not started working on this yet. Instead, we have been just using `clang` manually to drive the linking.

# *Implementation details*
Quite a few of us have been using glue scripts to achieve end-to-end workflow (i.e. Fortran source --> executable). We want to focus on supporting this workflow in `flang-new` as soon as we can. We will try to achieve this without major design changes and that's why we want to focus on the bare minimum of options required here.

However, we probably want to introduce `ParseTreeConsumer` and `FIRConsumer` (or something similar) at some point. These abstraction layers would be similar to `ASTConsumer` in Clang and would allow a cleaner separation between the driver and various consumers of the intermediate representations in LLVM Flang. This could be a good time to introduce them, but it's an "implementation detail" that we can refine/revisit later.

# *Bash script*
Once `flang-new` is capable of generating executables, shall we rename it as `flang` and then rename the `flang` [4] bash script as e.g.
`flang-to-gfortran` (or something similar)?

Thank you for reading,
Andrzej

[1] https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Freviews.llvm.org%2FD105811&data=04%7C01%7Cpsteinfeld%40nvidia.com%7C4dc3f386ec024dd6e73508d9835aa3aa%7C43083d15727340c1b7db39efd9ccc17a%7C0%7C0%7C637685247587498149%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=loFLSH6Tk0gX2ebuIY0Y4Cmu1O5vdl02mEaDZPviVzs%3D&reserved=0
[2] https://github.com/flang-compiler/f18-llvm-project/pull/1008
[3] https://github.com/flang-compiler/f18-llvm-project
[4] https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/main/flang/tools/f18/flang
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