[LLVMbugs] [Bug 9516] New: Refactor and unify "turn global constant into bytes"

[bugzilla-daemon at llvm.org]

http://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=9516

           Summary: Refactor and unify "turn global constant into bytes"
           Product: new-bugs
           Version: 2.8
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: NEW
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P
         Component: new bugs
        AssignedTo: unassignedbugs at nondot.org
        ReportedBy: jwatte at gmail.com
                CC: llvmbugs at cs.uiuc.edu


I'm writing a new back-end, using an object format that is not an ELF file.
To do this, a large part of the work is to write code that takes a GlobalValue
(really, a Constant) and turns it into bytes into an array.

It turns out that there are lots of samples that do this -- anything from the
ELFWriter and AsmPrinter, to the JIT, to each of the microcontroller-specific
object files (like the PIC object file writer).

But, "turn Constant into array of bytes" is a really generic operation that
could probably be done once, in a library, and re-used everywhere, rather than
re-implemented each time.

Separately, the selection of a "section" of an object file, given a
GlobalVariable, may also be re-usable, but should be separate from the
evaluation of a Constant into bytes -- some object formats don't even have
"sections" as such (like the JIT, perhaps?)

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