[LLVMdev] CBE progress and design

[Roel Jordans]

Hello all,

As some of you may remember, I am trying to get the C back-end back in 
working condition.  I have the old version up and running (including 
most of it's pre-existing bugs), email me if you want a patch to the 
current trunk.


=== Question 1: new design feedback ===
I am currently looking into moving the CBE to run after the initial 
lowering and type legalization phases so that it can support arbitrarily 
sized data.  However, both lowering and type legalization require target 
information about the supported types and operations.  Or more 
specifically, they need a TargetLowering to be defined.  My current 
problem is that I have no clue on what should be in there as this will 
probably be very dependent on the intended use of the CBE.

I currently have two options for solving this.  My question to you is 
what you think of them and do you have other suggestions for me to look 
into?

1) I could try to make a generic, configurable, CTargetLowering and 
allow the user to specify all kinds of things.  However, I am not yet 
familiar enough with LLVM's CodeGen framework to trust myself to get 
this complete enough without spending a huge amount of time in figuring 
out what should and should not be relevant for the CBE.

2) Another option I thought of was to try and use an existing 
TargetLowering from the other back-ends.  To achieve this I would get 
the original target from the IR module and try to dynamically load the 
corresponding target description, including the lowering and type 
information.  That way I could at least get some information without 
having to think of the specifics for now.

One way to add manual configuration is to make a 'generic' back-end 
which provides user configurable versions of the required information. I 
should also know what kind of information is required by the time I have 
a working CBE using existing target information.


=== Question 2: getting things into LLVM ===
Some people have already asked me to send them my patch for the current 
CBE.  It is my goal to get the CBE back into the main LLVM repository in 
the end.  However, my changes during the move of the CBE to after 
legalization will probably make the new CBE drastically different from 
the current version.  My guess is that I should first try to get the new 
version working (somewhat) before we start working on getting it into 
the trunk.

My question here is at what point should I start trying to get things 
into the LLVM SVN and how can I organize my work to make the inclusion 
as painless as possible?


Best regards,
  Roel