[LLVMdev] LLVM Weekly - #63, Mar 16th 2015

[Alex Bradbury]

LLVM Weekly - #63, Mar 16th 2015
================================

If you prefer, you can read a HTML version of this email at
<http://llvmweekly.org/issue/63>.

Welcome to the sixty-third issue of LLVM Weekly, a weekly newsletter
(published every Monday) covering developments in LLVM, Clang, and related
projects. LLVM Weekly is brought to you by [Alex
Bradbury](http://asbradbury.org). Subscribe to future issues at
<http://llvmweekly.org> and pass it on to anyone else you think may be
interested. Please send any tips or feedback to <asb at asbradbury.org>, or
@llvmweekly or @asbradbury on Twitter.


## News and articles from around the web

LLVM is taking part in [Google Summer of
Code](https://developers.google.com/open-source/soc/) as a mentoring
organisation. Students can earn a $5500 stipend by working on open source
projects over the summer, and applications upon today (March 16th). See
[here](https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/list/public/google/gsoc2015?tag=llvm)
for the list of mentoring organisations advertising LLVM-related projects.
Please do help spread the word. I am biased, but I'd like to draw particular
attention to the wide variety of [lowRISC GSoC
ideas](http://www.lowrisc.org/docs/gsoc-2015-ideas/), including a project to
implement an LLVM pass using tagged memory to provide protection against
control-flow hijacking.

Version 0.11 of Pocl, the portable open-source OpenCL implementation [has been
released](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/83457/).
Additions in this release include initial Android support and MIPS
architecture support.

Version 1.11 of TCE, the TTA-based (Transport Triggered Architecture)
Co-design Environment, which uses LLVM [has been
released](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/83377).
This release adds support for LLVM 3.6.

There will be a [LLVM
microconference](http://wiki.linuxplumbersconf.org/2015:llvm) at the Linux
Plumbers Conference in August. There is a [call for
speakers](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.clang.devel/41706).


## On the mailing lists

* If you enjoy bikesheds, this thread may be for you. Renato Golin has kicked
off a [thread on commit message
policy](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.clang.devel/41760/).

* Rui Ueyama has posted to the mailing list [summarising his recent work on
LLD performance
improvements](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/83438).
The follow up responses discuss potential remaining bottlenecks.

* William Moses is [interested in parallel extensions to LLVM
IR](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/83236), and the
thread spawned quite a few interesting responses.

* Mohammad Kazem's [question about counting loads and stores of
variables](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/83224)
elicited some useful responses.

* Will Dietz who has been maintaining the [unofficial LLVM Github
mirror](https://github.com/llvm-mirror) for the past few years is interested
in [LLVM taking over the service
'officially'](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/83239).


## LLVM commits

* As DataLayout is now mandatory, LLVM APIs have been updated to use
references to DataLayout. [r231740](http://reviews.llvm.org/rL231740).

* Support was added for part-word atomics on PowerPC.
[r231843](http://reviews.llvm.org/rL231843).

* Initial work on enhancing ValueTracking to infer known bits of a value from
known-true conditional expressions has landed.
[r231879](http://reviews.llvm.org/rL231879).

* The PowerPC READMEs have been updated to list potential future enhancements.
[r231946](http://reviews.llvm.org/rL231946).

* The `llvm.eh.actions` intrinsic has been added.
[r232003](http://reviews.llvm.org/rL232003).

* The documentation for llvm-cov has been updated.
[r232007](http://reviews.llvm.org/rL232007).

* The getting started docs now describe CMake as the preferred way to build
LLVM. [r232135](http://reviews.llvm.org/rL232135).

* llvm-vtabledump is now known as llvm-cxxdump.
[r232301](http://reviews.llvm.org/rL232301).


## Clang commits

* The steady stream of OpenMP patches continues, with the addition of codegen
support for the omp task directive and omp for.
[r231762](http://reviews.llvm.org/rL231762),
[r232036](http://reviews.llvm.org/rL232036).

* Copy-constructor closures for MS ABI support has been added.
[r231952](http://reviews.llvm.org/rL231952).


## Other project commits

* LLD gained support for linker script expression evaluation and parsing of
the MEMORY and EXTERN commands. [r231707](http://reviews.llvm.org/rL231707),
[r231928](http://reviews.llvm.org/rL231928),
[r232110](http://reviews.llvm.org/rL232110).

* LLDB gained a `CODE_OWNERS.txt` file.
[r231936](http://reviews.llvm.org/rL231936).