[LLVMdev] LLVM & Incremental Compilation

[Tim Macfarlane]

Hi people!

I'm looking for a back-end compiler for a language project of mine, LLVM
looks promising, but I'd like to clear a few things up first:

1. What relation does LLVM bear with GCC; why would somebody use LLVM
for a compiler back-end over GCC (aside from the Virtual Machine)? How
do the goals of GCC and LLVM differ as compiler toolkits?

2. How conducive to Incremental Compilation is LLVM? I would like to be
able to compile and execute code in the same process immediately. An
example of this would be in an interactive programming environment, or a
Common Lisp style of compilation.

3. Is LLVM able to support advanced runtime features as continuations,
garbage collection and resuming exception handling. Would there be
anything in LLVM that would prevent these sorts of features? Is there
anything in the LLVM runtime that is assumed (dynamic typing, etc). Or
is LLVM as it's title sugests: Low-Level, so it won't get in your way?

Thanks for your time!

Tim.