[LLVMdev] LLVM pre-built libraries download? (OBJ_ROOT structure)

Lance de La Haye lance.delahaye at gmail.com
Fri Jul 10 22:31:04 PDT 2009


I am just beginning to use LLVM, and find that 'getting started' is the 
steep part of the learning curve. I am using MingW and msys, which I have 
not fully grokked yet.

Anyway, actually building the libraries from source is turning out to be 
difficult. I want to work with LLVM as described in the except from the LLVM 
FAQ below. I am using C++, so the FFI is a non-issue.

Can someone supply me with a download link for a fully built LLVM OBJ_ROOT 
directory structure/libraries/object files, for MinGW?

And can I suggest that such a thing be made available on the LLVM downloads 
page? It would avoid a pretty steep learning curve, to get 
mingw/msys/gnuwin32 packages cooperating enough to get LLVM built.

I have looked at the MinGW binaries package (llvm-2.5-x86-mingw32.tar.bz2) 
and this doesn't seem to be what I need.

==================================================================================
>From LLVM FAQs : http://llvm.org/docs/FAQ.html#langirgen
I'd like to write a self-hosting LLVM compiler. How should I interface with 
the LLVM middle-end optimizers and back-end code generators?

Your compiler front-end will communicate with LLVM by creating a module in 
the LLVM intermediate representation (IR) format. Assuming you want to write 
your language's compiler in the language itself (rather than C++), there are 
3 major ways to tackle generating LLVM IR from a front-end:

  a.. Call into the LLVM libraries code using your language's FFI (foreign 
function interface).
    a.. for: best tracks changes to the LLVM IR, .ll syntax, and .bc format
    b.. for: enables running LLVM optimization passes without a emit/parse 
overhead
    c.. for: adapts well to a JIT context
    d.. against: lots of ugly glue code to write
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