[llvm-dev] bitcode versioning

[Manuel Rigger via llvm-dev]

Hi all,

I am implementing a LLVM IR interpreter and have the following problem: I
want to support execution of bitcode files targeted towards different LLVM
versions. For example, a user of the interpreter should be able to compile
a C file with the latest version of Clang, a Fortran file with Dragonegg
(targeting LLVM 3.3), and a Haskell file with GHC (targeting LLVM 3.5), and
then just feed it to my interpreter without additional arguments.

Currently, my parser expects textual representation for a specific LLVM
version. I could provide different parsers or parser configurations that
support different bitcode versions, but there is no notion of a version
field in the textual representation that I could use to determine which
parser to use. Anyway, for the long term it is not a good idea to rely on
the textual format due to the missing backward compatibility guarantees.

Hence, I want to replace the textual format parser with a parser for
bitcode, which would also be able to parse the files of my example. But how
should I treat bitcode files of major upcoming releases, e.g., of LLVM 4.1?
I found a version ID in the bitcode wrapper format, but the documentation
states that the ID is currently always 0. Is there a policy that specifies
when the ID will be updated? Without having such a policy in place, I would
just postpone the problem I currently have with the textual format parser.

I know that bitcode files have not been designed for storage and
distribution. Still, I wondered if there is a good solution to my problem.
Do I really have to let the user specify which version a LLVM IR file
targets?

- Manuel
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