[LLVMdev] LLVM feedback from new user

[Dibyendu Majumdar]

Hi,

I posted a few weeks ago that I am creating a JIT compiler using LLVM
for a Lua derived language that I have named Ravi. I wanted to share
my experience of getting started with LLVM.

The following aspects of LLVM have really help me get going:

1. The ability to generate LLVM IR from C programs using Clang. As a
newbie this is invaluable - I can determine what IR I should generate
by constructing small C snippets and generating IR from it.

2. Type checking in the IR Builder and the IR Verifier - these save me
from bugs again and again - so I have come to really appreciate the
type safety of LLVM IR and the ability to validate the IR before
generating any code.

3. LLVM usage in other projects - sometimes when I have got stuck I
have been able to find answers by looking at how other OpenSource
projects using LLVM solve a particular problem.

The following areas I feel could be improved:

The documentation is not really geared for newbies. So I struggled
with this a bit. I have tried to document what I learned here:

http://the-ravi-programming-language.readthedocs.org/en/latest/llvm-notes.html
http://the-ravi-programming-language.readthedocs.org/en/latest/llvm-tbaa.html

I hope these are useful to others starting out with LLVM.

Thanks and Regards
Dibyendu