[llvm-dev] Improving LLVM string attributes

[Serge Guelton via llvm-dev]

Hi folks,

LLVM handles freeform attributes through string attributes ("key"="value" in the
textual IR). Although it's freeform, some of these attributes are relatively
standard and widely used (e.g. "target-cpu" or "target-features").

However, there's no central place where these attributes are either mentionned,
normalized etc.

In an effort to improve this siutation, I've submitted

    https://reviews.llvm.org/D114082

Which is still a WIP by some aspects, but it compiles and passes validation on
X86. The key aspects of it are that:

1. common attributes get a private symbol to represent them. For instance

        OutlinedFn->addFnAttr("omp_target_num_teams", std::to_string(DefaultValTeams));

   becomes

        OutlinedFn->addFnAttr(llvm::OmpTargetNumTeamsAttr, std::to_string(DefaultValTeams));

2. free forms attributes are still buildable through a specific factory

        Fn->addFnAttr(Out.str());

   becomes

        Fn->addFnAttr(llvm::AttributeKey::Create(Out.str()));

I see several advantage in that approach:

- it avoids typo in common attributes

- it associates a type to Attributes key (currently named AttributeKey), which
  unlocks more potential optimization

- (NIY) one could document the meaning of these attributes alongside their
  definition, instead of existing mess ;-)

As a specific optimization, I already made most AttributeKey be constexpr and have
them store their hash, which makes this implementation faster than existing
implementation: when checking if an attribute is available, no hash
recomputation is involved.

/extra note 0/ no change to the IR, that's only a higher level abstraction over
existing representation. And free-form attributes are still supported, without
much overhead.

/extra note 1/ as a side effect, I get a ~1% compile time speedup when compiling large
file in -O0 with the patch above.

So yeah, how do you feel about that?