[LLVMdev] MSIL backend

[Jeff Cohen]

Anton Korobeynikov wrote:
> Hello, Jeff.
>
>   
>> and dereference it.  But MSIL is at a higher level, where one simply 
>> uses the callvirt instruction to do a virtual call and no vtable is 
>> supplied or even present.
>>     
> You're right. Consider we will have some FE for MSIL, which will just
> generate LLVM's "call" instruction with some predefined CC, which will
> mean "this is virtual call". Backend can emit normal callvirt
> instruction in this case. I hope, many high-level things can be avoided
> using such tricks.
>   

This trick is too clever for your own good.  It will wreck LLVM's 
inter-procedural analysis, because it won't know the call is virtual.  
LLVM may make an invalid optimization due to the faulty analysis (like 
inlining the target).  Trying to pass through MSIL object semantics in 
this fashion isn't likely to work for this and similar reasons.

>> There's no obvious way to reconstruct the  higher level object semantics
>> from LLVM IR, and sure enough the new MSIL back end never generates a
>> callvirt instruction.  In other words, it is incapable of using the 
>> .NET framework library or anything else relying on virtual method calls.
>>     
> Well, I can be wrong. But if we will (possible) have some FE, which will
> try to save such semantics using LLVM methods?
>
>   
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