Re: [boost] Clang: Open-source C/C++ front end under development

From: Chris Lattner (clattner_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-08-31 13:08:05

Fei Liu <feiliu <at> aepnetworks.com> writes:
> Sounds promising, but here:
> [root <at> maple clang]# make -j3
> Makefile:4: ../../Makefile.common: No such file or directory
> make: *** No rule to make target `../../Makefile.common'.  Stop.

You need to run get LLVM and run configure first.  Here's a "quick start guide"
which should work.

First steps: get LLVM and build it.  You don't need llvm-gcc, and you don't
need to do make install.  I'd strongly suggest building it with objdir=srcdir.

$ svn co http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/llvm/trunk llvm
$ cd llvm
$ ./configure
$ make

This will build LLVM in debug mode.  I suggest adding llvm/Debug/bin to
your path, which will give you utilities like llvm-as, llc, lli, etc.  All of
these have --help options, and all the LLVM utilities have pages here: 
http://llvm.org/docs/CommandGuide/ .  Once you have this, check out the
clang front-end.  Continuing the above:

$ cd tools
$ svn co http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/cfe/trunk clang
$ cd clang
$ make

the make command will build the llvm/Debug/bin/clang tool, which is the
front-end.

Once you have the clang tool, there are a bunch of different options for
different things (see clang --help): you can parse and pretty print C code,
run the preprocessor, etc.  There are a variety of GCC compatible options.
One main feature of the front-end is that we produce excellent diagnostics, 
particularly for type checking errors etc.

This work is still somewhat early on.  In particular, our C++ support is very
minimal at this point.  That said, we have a great foundation, architecture, and
a commitment to seeing it through.  If you have further questions of comments,
please follow up on the cfe-dev list
(http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev) to avoid off-topic posts
here.

Thanks!

-Chris