[LLVMdev] The "scope" of passes

[John Criswell]

Devang Patel wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 6:41 PM, ether zhhb <etherzhhb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> that's because FunctionPass implement the "addLowerLevelRequiredPass"
>> function, but others not.
>>
>> so, is there any special reason that only "addLowerLevelRequiredPass" is
>> allow?
>>
>>     
>
> There is no reason to not allow it. It is not done because there was
> not any use. If you need this then pl. prepare a patch!
>   

Alternatively, if you wrote the BasicBlock analysis pass, you could 
easily modify it to be a FunctionPass.

Currently, I think this is a better alternative because:

1) It doesn't require patching LLVM (meaning that your passes can work 
with LLVM 2.7)
2) You will get better reusability of the analysis results.  When a 
higher level pass calls a lower level pass (e.g., ModulePass calls 
FunctionPass), the lower level pass is run again, even if it was run 
previously and did not have its analysis results invalidated.  If the 
passes are of the same level (e.g., FunctionPass requires FunctionPass), 
then the PassManager can avoid duplicate runs of the analysis pass if 
its results are not invalidated.

-- John T.

> -
> Devang
>