[LLVMdev] MSIL backend

[Jeff Cohen]

Chris Lattner wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Mar 2007, Jeff Cohen wrote:
>> I'm confused.  A MSIL front end I can understand, but a back end?  How
>> will it be used?  The GCC-based front ends that come with LLVM generate
>> bytecodes that have dependencies on the GCC runtime, which is not going
>> to be present in a .NET environment.
>
> Who said the input has to come through the GCC front-ends?  Perhaps 
> this is for Jolt -> .NET? :)
>
> -Chris

Then the problem is the converse:  the .NET runtime won't be available 
if one of the other back ends is used.  It will be very hard for a front 
end to support both MSIL and the other back ends.

Yes, it is possible to write C++ that can be compiled to MSIL and use 
the .NET runtime, but only by using Microsoft's Managed C++ extensions 
(which basically provide C# semantics via ugly C++ syntax).  It's safe 
to say llvm-gcc doesn't support these extensions :)