[LLVMdev] Using LLVM with clang for a homebrew kernel

[andreas at galauner.de]

It's no problem for me to write platform specific code. In fact I have to.
I also don't bother recompiling my code for another target platform.

The only thing I need is to select the target platform, LLVM should emit
binary code for.
I'm going to place my HAL (so all of the platform dependent stuff in terms
of code written in C(++) and ASM) in some static library that can be linked
with my kernel code, but that's just to put a line between those two layers
for me as a programmer.
The platform specific code is written in C++ and some Assembly. It's the
compiler's job to create correct C(++) code for the platform and mine to
create correct assembler code which conforms to the ABI of my platform.

Currently I don't have much code. It's just a small kernel with some
memory management and half of a scheduler.
I just wanted to play with LLVM a bit and thought about compiling this
code with LLVM instead of GCC. That's all.
I don't even want to use any LLVM Bitcode in it. I just want to use LLVM
as a compiler.

The only reason why I'm asking on this mailing list is that I didn't find
any documentation about how to use LLVM as a standalone cross-compiler in
terms of "compile this code for ARM and put it into a mach-o file, please."

Andreas

On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:27:20 +0200, Jochen Wilhelmy <j.wilhelmy at arcor.de>
wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> In the llvm-doc is the following:
> 
> Also, since many platforms define their ABIs in terms of C, and since 
> LLVM is lower-level than C, front-ends currently must emit 
> platform-specific IR in order to have the result conform to the platform

> ABI.
> 
> Can you give an example for this except system calls (which e.g. on 
> windows use
> a different calling convention)?
> If you write your own operating system then how does llvm-IR depend on 
> the ABI?
> 
> -Jochen
> 
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