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LLVM is seriously one of the coolest projects going on right now. On a whim, I decided to see if I could compile LLVM IR to .NET, and it took maybe a grand tota

by daeken 8y ago

LLVM is seriously one of the coolest projects going on right now. On a whim, I decided to see if I could compile LLVM IR to .NET, and it took maybe a grand total of 12 hours to get it all working. I've done a lot of compiler work in the past, but nothing is so universally nice as LLVM.

mehrdadn 8y ago
Out of curiosity, did this involve actually using the LLVM code itself much? Or do you mean you wrote your own interpreter for the IR that it emits?
- flamedoge 8y ago
  I think easiest way is just to write a backend that emits .NET IR since infra is already there.
  - daeken 8y ago
    There are four ways I considered for implementing this: write an LLVM backend that spits out .NET binaries; write an LLVM backend that spits out C# or CIL assembly; read the LLVM bytecode from .NET and then generate code from there; use the LLVM API to generate some intermediary then handle the compilation from .NET. I tried #3 first, but landed on #4 in the interest of time. It's not the cleanest approach -- that'd be either using the LLVM API from .NET or implementing a proper backend (assuming there's some decent implementation of a .NET binary writer, since that's a mess) -- but it's stupid simple and effective.
    - lostmsu 8y ago
      There is one, actually: https://github.com/UbiquityDotNET/Llvm.NET https://github.com/UbiquityDotNET/Llvm.NET
- daeken 8y ago
  I have a piece of code in C++ that uses the LLVM API to walk over a bytecode file generated by clang, which generates my own more easily parsed format. Then my C# takes over from there. So it has quite a lot of LLVM code, but it technically doesn't need to, in theory.
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    I see, okay thanks!
lostmsu 8y ago
Open source?
- daeken 8y ago
  https://github.com/daeken/Nettens https://github.com/daeken/Nettens It's crazy early stage -- literally my project this weekend -- but it's a start. My goal is to compile Skia; maybe in a month or two.
  - shawn 8y ago
    Kids these days and using the `auto` keyword... Back in my day you had to use template typename metaprogramming! </lawn> It's quite pretty code. Thanks for making it available.
  - lostmsu 8y ago
    Looks cool. You should add a license.

by daeken 8y ago

mehrdadn 8y ago

Out of curiosity, did this involve actually using the LLVM code itself much? Or do you mean you wrote your own interpreter for the IR that it emits?

flamedoge 8y ago
I think easiest way is just to write a backend that emits .NET IR since infra is already there.
- daeken 8y ago
  There are four ways I considered for implementing this: write an LLVM backend that spits out .NET binaries; write an LLVM backend that spits out C# or CIL assembly; read the LLVM bytecode from .NET and then generate code from there; use the LLVM API to generate some intermediary then handle the compilation from .NET. I tried #3 first, but landed on #4 in the interest of time. It's not the cleanest approach -- that'd be either using the LLVM API from .NET or implementing a proper backend (assuming there's some decent implementation of a .NET binary writer, since that's a mess) -- but it's stupid simple and effective.
  - lostmsu 8y ago
    There is one, actually: https://github.com/UbiquityDotNET/Llvm.NET https://github.com/UbiquityDotNET/Llvm.NET
daeken 8y ago
I have a piece of code in C++ that uses the LLVM API to walk over a bytecode file generated by clang, which generates my own more easily parsed format. Then my C# takes over from there. So it has quite a lot of LLVM code, but it technically doesn't need to, in theory.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  I see, okay thanks!

lostmsu 8y ago

Open source?

daeken 8y ago
https://github.com/daeken/Nettens https://github.com/daeken/Nettens It's crazy early stage -- literally my project this weekend -- but it's a start. My goal is to compile Skia; maybe in a month or two.
- shawn 8y ago
  Kids these days and using the `auto` keyword... Back in my day you had to use template typename metaprogramming! </lawn> It's quite pretty code. Thanks for making it available.
- lostmsu 8y ago
  Looks cool. You should add a license.