[LLVMdev] Summer of Code ideas

[Nick Frolov]

mån 2010-03-22 klockan 17:23 -0700 skrev Chris Lattner:

> We generally prefer for GSoC projects that are useful to a broad range
>  of people or that opens llvm to a new community.

My idea was to propose bringing LLVM to Inferno OS (the complement
project of Plan 9 from Bell Labs). This OS has a virtual machine (called
Dis) included in the kernel, which is the only option to write
user-level applications. Unfortunately only one language can be compiled
to its bytecode (Limbo). Inferno does not enjoy significant recognition
from general audience, nevertheless it is used in as an embedded OS and
a VM running on top of another OS (it is not intended to be a
yet-another-language-VM though).

Robust compiler infrastructure can attract more developers to Inferno.
Lack of support of popular languages is one of major problems on the way
of its adoption. It is a better platform to start exploring fundamental
ideas of Plan 9 than Plan 9 itself, because there are no hardware
compatibility problems by design, as the kernel has out-of-the-box
support for running as a user process on a different OS.

This work could start with implementing a backend emitting Dis bytecode.
For languages that employ pointer arithmetic some kind of sandbox should
be added. Later, support of JIT optimizer from LLVM could be added also.

Does all this count as opening LLVM to a new community?