[LLVMdev] Re: a linking problem of LLVM

[Dinakar Dhurjati]

Hi Jing,

I am cc ing to LLVMdev (LLVM developer's mailing list). You get more 
accurate and faster responses that way.

<snip>

> Actually LLVM is well documented and the coding style is very friendly. We have rarely had problems since we started one month ago. Unfortunately, here comes something I am not very clear, but it is critical to our evaluation. I appreciate if you could take a few minutes to look at this, or we could schedule a meeting sometime good for you.
>  
>
Sure, I'd be happy to help.

>The problem is about linking optimization. If I disable link-time optimization, two of Spec2000 integer benchmarks (164.gzip and 256.bzip2) will fail the execution. If I allow default link optimization, all errors are gone. I used out-of-box source code, and did not apply any pass I made. The commands I used are:
>  llvm-gcc %.c –o %.ll
>  llvm-as %.ll –o %.bc
>  gccld  -disable-opt [all *.bc] –o $bench.bc
>  llc $bench.bc.bc –o $bench.s
>  gcc $bench.s –o $bench
>
>Then I ran $bench on my native Pentium4-linux machine. Do you think the sequence of the commands is correct? 
>

Using the above sequence should give an error in step 2. What you do 
from step 3 however, is correct.

In general, llvm-gcc x.c -o x
creates an executable shell script 'x' and a byte code file 'x.bc'

In your case, you have 'llvm-gcc x.c -o x.ll'
This creates x.ll (the executable shell script) and a byte code file x.ll.bc
When you use llvm-as on x.ll (a shell script) you should get an error!

llvm-gcc is intended as a replacement for gcc in the Makefiles. You can 
compile the same way you'd compile with gcc. I recommend doing the 
following

llvm-gcc -c %.c
llvm-gcc -Wl,-disable-opt *.o -o bench

(-Wl is for passing options to the linker. Alternatively you can use 
gccld like you did)

This should create a shell script 'bench' and a byte code file 'bench.bc'
Now you can use llc and gcc as in your sequence.


>The non-link-optimized gzip can finish execution, but generate an incorrect log file (I diff it with the correct one). The non-link-optimized bzip2 did not finish execution at all. The error message is “(null): Data integrity error when decompressing. Stored CRC = 0x99e8f60, computed CRC = 0xc666c804 Input file = , output file = “. 
>

If you still have the problem above, it could be due to code 
generation/miscompilation bug in LLVM. Can you try using the C backend? 
Replace the last two steps by

llc -march=c bench.bc
gcc bench.cbe.c

and let us know the results.

>I also want to know how to disable part of the linking-optimization instead of disabling all. I haven’t found a flag that can do this.
>

gccld does not have a command line option to disable selected 
optimizations.
You can however do the following. All the optimizations (organized as 
passes in LLVM) run by gccld are in llvm/tools/gccld/GenerateCode.cpp

If you want to disable a specific pass, comment out that line in the 
file and recompile.
e.g. //addPass(Passes, createGlobalDCEPass());
disables the GlobalDCE optimization.

Hope it helps

Dinakar