[LLVMdev] Windows question: Dozens of linker warnings and errors

[Mikael Lyngvig]

Thanks for the quick reply.  I had a feeling that it was due to missing
Windows support in clang++ and LLVM.

"""
This is due to clang not understanding force_inline. These functions
are defined in a header included from Windows.h, so it ends up getting
a definition everywhere it is included.
"""

How much work would it take to add support for force_inline?  Are there any
plans for when/if it will be supported?  I don't know anything about
force_inline, but I guess supporting it is a relatively simple matter.
 After all, isn't a forced_inline construct similar to an inlined template
method?  In the old MS-OMF days, we'd start talking about COMDATs and stuff
like that, but I don't know how it is done nowadays.

"""
The rest of the issues are due to clang not supporting the Microsoft
C++ ABI yet. To use clang on Windows for C++ code you will need to use
it with MinGW as it provides libraries that use the GNU C++ ABI.

"""
I guess this is quite a mouthful, but when do you roughly expect the
Microsoft C++ ABI to be supported?  v4.0 or later?  Is there anything not
too overwhelming and/or complex that I can do to speed up this process?

I am asking these questions because I see myself as a wannabe client of the
LLVM tools - I don't know much about code generation and I don't really
want to know much about it, all I want to do is to make my own production
language using LLVM as the portable (also to Windows/M$) backend.  My hope
is that LLVM can save me the hassles of meddling around with assembler and
so on, as I'd much rather spend my energy on my language.  But if the
Windows support is broken, partial beyond use, or never to be finished up,
I cannot use LLVM.  Then I'd have spend my energy on writing my own simple
code generator, which would never generate code of a quality anywhere near
LLVM.  Or, I could go ahead and do my own silly backend and then check up
on LLVM in a couple of years, to see if the Windows support was matured.

By the way, I do have a background in linkers and compilers for Windows
platforms, so if I can help with anything, I'll be glad to do so.  Just
don't expect me to work miracles from day one because it has been almost 15
years since I last worked with compilers and linkers.

Perhaps I can contribute in the field of Windows support?   I once wrote a
librarian for OMF (the ancient object file format used under DOS) and COFF.
 I could probably add support for COFF archives to llvm-ar, if need be.
 And stuff like that.


Sincerely,
Mikael
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