[LLVMdev] The LLVMLinux Project

[Jan-Simon Möller]

Hi all!

For LLVMLinux on i586/x86_64 the current status can be summarized by:

Thanks to the excellent work on patches by the PaX team and Bryce Lelbach 
(lll-project) and their contributions to the LLVMLinux project we can 
successfully build a v3.3 kernel which boots to console and desktop on x86.

Their patches are included in the LLVMLinux project repository.

The following issues still need resolution (of course patches welcome ;) ):

* The x86 portion of LLVMLinux is currently based upon kernel v3.3 - the
  patches need to be split and rebased to HEAD so that the buildbot is able to
  detect breakages early and also improve contributions to upstream projects.

* Module unloading fails/impossible. (Check required. Also on ARM)

  -  Module loading is fine (even binary blobs!).

Issues specific to x86 related to LLVM/Clang are:

* Macro support (WIP in upstream LLVM/Clang - 
                 PaX-Team/Andy Zhang/Rafael Espindola)

* code16gcc support - low-level bootup code 
	(would need own backend, 16bit code currently unsupported)

* Lateron: take care of optimizations (e.g. missing -ffixed-REG, 
  -fcall-used-REG, -fcall-saved-REG ; we require 
  CONFIG_ARCH_HWEIGHT_CFLAGS to be off atm)

To get an "ordinary" system working with network, firewall, drivers we need 
these issues resolved.

Contributions appreciated and patches welcome !

Best regards,
Jan-Simon Möller