[Heikki Kultala] This patch contains the ABI changes for the TCE target.
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19 <h1>Precompiled Headers</h1>
21 <p>This document describes the design and implementation of Clang's
22 precompiled headers (PCH). If you are interested in the end-user
23 view, please see the <a
24 href="UsersManual.html#precompiledheaders">User's Manual</a>.</p>
26 <p><b>Table of Contents</b></p>
27 <ul>
28 <li><a href="#usage">Using Precompiled Headers with
29 <tt>clang</tt></a></li>
30 <li><a href="#philosophy">Design Philosophy</a></li>
31 <li><a href="#contents">Precompiled Header Contents</a>
32 <ul>
33 <li><a href="#metadata">Metadata Block</a></li>
34 <li><a href="#sourcemgr">Source Manager Block</a></li>
35 <li><a href="#preprocessor">Preprocessor Block</a></li>
36 <li><a href="#types">Types Block</a></li>
37 <li><a href="#decls">Declarations Block</a></li>
38 <li><a href="#stmt">Statements and Expressions</a></li>
39 <li><a href="#idtable">Identifier Table Block</a></li>
40 <li><a href="#method-pool">Method Pool Block</a></li>
41 </ul>
42 </li>
43 <li><a href="#tendrils">Precompiled Header Integration
44 Points</a></li>
45 </ul>
47 <h2 id="usage">Using Precompiled Headers with <tt>clang</tt></h2>
49 <p>The Clang compiler frontend, <tt>clang -cc1</tt>, supports two command line
50 options for generating and using PCH files.<p>
52 <p>To generate PCH files using <tt>clang -cc1</tt>, use the option
53 <b><tt>-emit-pch</tt></b>:
55 <pre> $ clang -cc1 test.h -emit-pch -o test.h.pch </pre>
57 <p>This option is transparently used by <tt>clang</tt> when generating
58 PCH files. The resulting PCH file contains the serialized form of the
59 compiler's internal representation after it has completed parsing and
60 semantic analysis. The PCH file can then be used as a prefix header
61 with the <b><tt>-include-pch</tt></b> option:</p>
63 <pre>
64 $ clang -cc1 -include-pch test.h.pch test.c -o test.s
65 </pre>
67 <h2 id="philosophy">Design Philosophy</h2>
69 <p>Precompiled headers are meant to improve overall compile times for
70 projects, so the design of precompiled headers is entirely driven by
71 performance concerns. The use case for precompiled headers is
72 relatively simple: when there is a common set of headers that is
73 included in nearly every source file in the project, we
74 <i>precompile</i> that bundle of headers into a single precompiled
75 header (PCH file). Then, when compiling the source files in the
76 project, we load the PCH file first (as a prefix header), which acts
77 as a stand-in for that bundle of headers.</p>
79 <p>A precompiled header implementation improves performance when:</p>
80 <ul>
81 <li>Loading the PCH file is significantly faster than re-parsing the
82 bundle of headers stored within the PCH file. Thus, a precompiled
83 header design attempts to minimize the cost of reading the PCH
84 file. Ideally, this cost should not vary with the size of the
85 precompiled header file.</li>
87 <li>The cost of generating the PCH file initially is not so large
88 that it counters the per-source-file performance improvement due to
89 eliminating the need to parse the bundled headers in the first
90 place. This is particularly important on multi-core systems, because
91 PCH file generation serializes the build when all compilations
92 require the PCH file to be up-to-date.</li>
93 </ul>
95 <p>Clang's precompiled headers are designed with a compact on-disk
96 representation, which minimizes both PCH creation time and the time
97 required to initially load the PCH file. The PCH file itself contains
98 a serialized representation of Clang's abstract syntax trees and
99 supporting data structures, stored using the same compressed bitstream
100 as <a href="http://llvm.org/docs/BitCodeFormat.html">LLVM's bitcode
101 file format</a>.</p>
103 <p>Clang's precompiled headers are loaded "lazily" from disk. When a
104 PCH file is initially loaded, Clang reads only a small amount of data
105 from the PCH file to establish where certain important data structures
106 are stored. The amount of data read in this initial load is
107 independent of the size of the PCH file, such that a larger PCH file
108 does not lead to longer PCH load times. The actual header data in the
109 PCH file--macros, functions, variables, types, etc.--is loaded only
110 when it is referenced from the user's code, at which point only that
111 entity (and those entities it depends on) are deserialized from the
112 PCH file. With this approach, the cost of using a precompiled header
113 for a translation unit is proportional to the amount of code actually
114 used from the header, rather than being proportional to the size of
115 the header itself.</p>
117 <p>When given the <code>-print-stats</code> option, Clang produces
118 statistics describing how much of the precompiled header was actually
119 loaded from disk. For a simple "Hello, World!" program that includes
120 the Apple <code>Cocoa.h</code> header (which is built as a precompiled
121 header), this option illustrates how little of the actual precompiled
122 header is required:</p>
124 <pre>
125 *** PCH Statistics:
126 933 stat cache hits
127 4 stat cache misses
128 895/39981 source location entries read (2.238563%)
129 19/15315 types read (0.124061%)
130 20/82685 declarations read (0.024188%)
131 154/58070 identifiers read (0.265197%)
132 0/7260 selectors read (0.000000%)
133 0/30842 statements read (0.000000%)
134 4/8400 macros read (0.047619%)
135 1/4995 lexical declcontexts read (0.020020%)
136 0/4413 visible declcontexts read (0.000000%)
137 0/7230 method pool entries read (0.000000%)
138 0 method pool misses
139 </pre>
141 <p>For this small program, only a tiny fraction of the source
142 locations, types, declarations, identifiers, and macros were actually
143 deserialized from the precompiled header. These statistics can be
144 useful to determine whether the precompiled header implementation can
145 be improved by making more of the implementation lazy.</p>
147 <p>Precompiled headers can be chained. When you create a PCH while
148 including an existing PCH, Clang can create the new PCH by referencing
149 the original file and only writing the new data to the new file. For
150 example, you could create a PCH out of all the headers that are very
151 commonly used throughout your project, and then create a PCH for every
152 single source file in the project that includes the code that is
153 specific to that file, so that recompiling the file itself is very fast,
154 without duplicating the data from the common headers for every file.</p>
156 <h2 id="contents">Precompiled Header Contents</h2>
158 <img src="PCHLayout.png" align="right" alt="Precompiled header layout">
160 <p>Clang's precompiled headers are organized into several different
161 blocks, each of which contains the serialized representation of a part
162 of Clang's internal representation. Each of the blocks corresponds to
163 either a block or a record within <a
164 href="http://llvm.org/docs/BitCodeFormat.html">LLVM's bitstream
165 format</a>. The contents of each of these logical blocks are described
166 below.</p>
168 <p>For a given precompiled header, the <a
169 href="http://llvm.org/cmds/llvm-bcanalyzer.html"><code>llvm-bcanalyzer</code></a>
170 utility can be used to examine the actual structure of the bitstream
171 for the precompiled header. This information can be used both to help
172 understand the structure of the precompiled header and to isolate
173 areas where precompiled headers can still be optimized, e.g., through
174 the introduction of abbreviations.</p>
176 <h3 id="metadata">Metadata Block</h3>
178 <p>The metadata block contains several records that provide
179 information about how the precompiled header was built. This metadata
180 is primarily used to validate the use of a precompiled header. For
181 example, a precompiled header built for a 32-bit x86 target cannot be used
182 when compiling for a 64-bit x86 target. The metadata block contains
183 information about:</p>
185 <dl>
186 <dt>Language options</dt>
187 <dd>Describes the particular language dialect used to compile the
188 PCH file, including major options (e.g., Objective-C support) and more
189 minor options (e.g., support for "//" comments). The contents of this
190 record correspond to the <code>LangOptions</code> class.</dd>
192 <dt>Target architecture</dt>
193 <dd>The target triple that describes the architecture, platform, and
194 ABI for which the PCH file was generated, e.g.,
195 <code>i386-apple-darwin9</code>.</dd>
197 <dt>PCH version</dt>
198 <dd>The major and minor version numbers of the precompiled header
199 format. Changes in the minor version number should not affect backward
200 compatibility, while changes in the major version number imply that a
201 newer compiler cannot read an older precompiled header (and
202 vice-versa).</dd>
204 <dt>Original file name</dt>
205 <dd>The full path of the header that was used to generate the
206 precompiled header.</dd>
208 <dt>Predefines buffer</dt>
209 <dd>Although not explicitly stored as part of the metadata, the
210 predefines buffer is used in the validation of the precompiled header.
211 The predefines buffer itself contains code generated by the compiler
212 to initialize the preprocessor state according to the current target,
213 platform, and command-line options. For example, the predefines buffer
214 will contain "<code>#define __STDC__ 1</code>" when we are compiling C
215 without Microsoft extensions. The predefines buffer itself is stored
216 within the <a href="#sourcemgr">source manager block</a>, but its
217 contents are verified along with the rest of the metadata.</dd>
219 </dl>
221 <p>A chained PCH file (that is, one that references another PCH) has
222 a slightly different metadata block, which contains the following
223 information:</p>
225 <dl>
226 <dt>Referenced file</dt>
227 <dd>The name of the referenced PCH file. It is looked up like a file
228 specified using -include-pch.</dd>
230 <dt>PCH version</dt>
231 <dd>This is the same as in normal PCH files.</dd>
233 <dt>Original file name</dt>
234 <dd>The full path of the header that was used to generate this
235 precompiled header.</dd>
237 </dl>
239 <p>The language options, target architecture and predefines buffer data
240 is taken from the end of the chain, since they have to match anyway.</p>
242 <h3 id="sourcemgr">Source Manager Block</h3>
244 <p>The source manager block contains the serialized representation of
245 Clang's <a
246 href="InternalsManual.html#SourceLocation">SourceManager</a> class,
247 which handles the mapping from source locations (as represented in
248 Clang's abstract syntax tree) into actual column/line positions within
249 a source file or macro instantiation. The precompiled header's
250 representation of the source manager also includes information about
251 all of the headers that were (transitively) included when building the
252 precompiled header.</p>
254 <p>The bulk of the source manager block is dedicated to information
255 about the various files, buffers, and macro instantiations into which
256 a source location can refer. Each of these is referenced by a numeric
257 "file ID", which is a unique number (allocated starting at 1) stored
258 in the source location. Clang serializes the information for each kind
259 of file ID, along with an index that maps file IDs to the position
260 within the PCH file where the information about that file ID is
261 stored. The data associated with a file ID is loaded only when
262 required by the front end, e.g., to emit a diagnostic that includes a
263 macro instantiation history inside the header itself.</p>
265 <p>The source manager block also contains information about all of the
266 headers that were included when building the precompiled header. This
267 includes information about the controlling macro for the header (e.g.,
268 when the preprocessor identified that the contents of the header
269 dependent on a macro like <code>LLVM_CLANG_SOURCEMANAGER_H</code>)
270 along with a cached version of the results of the <code>stat()</code>
271 system calls performed when building the precompiled header. The
272 latter is particularly useful in reducing system time when searching
273 for include files.</p>
275 <h3 id="preprocessor">Preprocessor Block</h3>
277 <p>The preprocessor block contains the serialized representation of
278 the preprocessor. Specifically, it contains all of the macros that
279 have been defined by the end of the header used to build the
280 precompiled header, along with the token sequences that comprise each
281 macro. The macro definitions are only read from the PCH file when the
282 name of the macro first occurs in the program. This lazy loading of
283 macro definitions is triggered by lookups into the <a
284 href="#idtable">identifier table</a>.</p>
286 <h3 id="types">Types Block</h3>
288 <p>The types block contains the serialized representation of all of
289 the types referenced in the translation unit. Each Clang type node
290 (<code>PointerType</code>, <code>FunctionProtoType</code>, etc.) has a
291 corresponding record type in the PCH file. When types are deserialized
292 from the precompiled header, the data within the record is used to
293 reconstruct the appropriate type node using the AST context.</p>
295 <p>Each type has a unique type ID, which is an integer that uniquely
296 identifies that type. Type ID 0 represents the NULL type, type IDs
297 less than <code>NUM_PREDEF_TYPE_IDS</code> represent predefined types
298 (<code>void</code>, <code>float</code>, etc.), while other
299 "user-defined" type IDs are assigned consecutively from
300 <code>NUM_PREDEF_TYPE_IDS</code> upward as the types are encountered.
301 The PCH file has an associated mapping from the user-defined types
302 block to the location within the types block where the serialized
303 representation of that type resides, enabling lazy deserialization of
304 types. When a type is referenced from within the PCH file, that
305 reference is encoded using the type ID shifted left by 3 bits. The
306 lower three bits are used to represent the <code>const</code>,
307 <code>volatile</code>, and <code>restrict</code> qualifiers, as in
308 Clang's <a
309 href="http://clang.llvm.org/docs/InternalsManual.html#Type">QualType</a>
310 class.</p>
312 <h3 id="decls">Declarations Block</h3>
314 <p>The declarations block contains the serialized representation of
315 all of the declarations referenced in the translation unit. Each Clang
316 declaration node (<code>VarDecl</code>, <code>FunctionDecl</code>,
317 etc.) has a corresponding record type in the PCH file. When
318 declarations are deserialized from the precompiled header, the data
319 within the record is used to build and populate a new instance of the
320 corresponding <code>Decl</code> node. As with types, each declaration
321 node has a numeric ID that is used to refer to that declaration within
322 the PCH file. In addition, a lookup table provides a mapping from that
323 numeric ID to the offset within the precompiled header where that
324 declaration is described.</p>
326 <p>Declarations in Clang's abstract syntax trees are stored
327 hierarchically. At the top of the hierarchy is the translation unit
328 (<code>TranslationUnitDecl</code>), which contains all of the
329 declarations in the translation unit. These declarations (such as
330 functions or struct types) may also contain other declarations inside
331 them, and so on. Within Clang, each declaration is stored within a <a
332 href="http://clang.llvm.org/docs/InternalsManual.html#DeclContext">declaration
333 context</a>, as represented by the <code>DeclContext</code> class.
334 Declaration contexts provide the mechanism to perform name lookup
335 within a given declaration (e.g., find the member named <code>x</code>
336 in a structure) and iterate over the declarations stored within a
337 context (e.g., iterate over all of the fields of a structure for
338 structure layout).</p>
340 <p>In Clang's precompiled header format, deserializing a declaration
341 that is a <code>DeclContext</code> is a separate operation from
342 deserializing all of the declarations stored within that declaration
343 context. Therefore, Clang will deserialize the translation unit
344 declaration without deserializing the declarations within that
345 translation unit. When required, the declarations stored within a
346 declaration context will be deserialized. There are two representations
347 of the declarations within a declaration context, which correspond to
348 the name-lookup and iteration behavior described above:</p>
350 <ul>
351 <li>When the front end performs name lookup to find a name
352 <code>x</code> within a given declaration context (for example,
353 during semantic analysis of the expression <code>p-&gt;x</code>,
354 where <code>p</code>'s type is defined in the precompiled header),
355 Clang deserializes a hash table mapping from the names within that
356 declaration context to the declaration IDs that represent each
357 visible declaration with that name. The entire hash table is
358 deserialized at this point (into the <code>llvm::DenseMap</code>
359 stored within each <code>DeclContext</code> object), but the actual
360 declarations are not yet deserialized. In a second step, those
361 declarations with the name <code>x</code> will be deserialized and
362 will be used as the result of name lookup.</li>
364 <li>When the front end performs iteration over all of the
365 declarations within a declaration context, all of those declarations
366 are immediately de-serialized. For large declaration contexts (e.g.,
367 the translation unit), this operation is expensive; however, large
368 declaration contexts are not traversed in normal compilation, since
369 such a traversal is unnecessary. However, it is common for the code
370 generator and semantic analysis to traverse declaration contexts for
371 structs, classes, unions, and enumerations, although those contexts
372 contain relatively few declarations in the common case.</li>
373 </ul>
375 <h3 id="stmt">Statements and Expressions</h3>
377 <p>Statements and expressions are stored in the precompiled header in
378 both the <a href="#types">types</a> and the <a
379 href="#decls">declarations</a> blocks, because every statement or
380 expression will be associated with either a type or declaration. The
381 actual statement and expression records are stored immediately
382 following the declaration or type that owns the statement or
383 expression. For example, the statement representing the body of a
384 function will be stored directly following the declaration of the
385 function.</p>
387 <p>As with types and declarations, each statement and expression kind
388 in Clang's abstract syntax tree (<code>ForStmt</code>,
389 <code>CallExpr</code>, etc.) has a corresponding record type in the
390 precompiled header, which contains the serialized representation of
391 that statement or expression. Each substatement or subexpression
392 within an expression is stored as a separate record (which keeps most
393 records to a fixed size). Within the precompiled header, the
394 subexpressions of an expression are stored, in reverse order, prior to the expression
395 that owns those expression, using a form of <a
396 href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation">Reverse
397 Polish Notation</a>. For example, an expression <code>3 - 4 + 5</code>
398 would be represented as follows:</p>
400 <table border="1">
401 <tr><td><code>IntegerLiteral(5)</code></td></tr>
402 <tr><td><code>IntegerLiteral(4)</code></td></tr>
403 <tr><td><code>IntegerLiteral(3)</code></td></tr>
404 <tr><td><code>BinaryOperator(-)</code></td></tr>
405 <tr><td><code>BinaryOperator(+)</code></td></tr>
406 <tr><td>STOP</td></tr>
407 </table>
409 <p>When reading this representation, Clang evaluates each expression
410 record it encounters, builds the appropriate abstract syntax tree node,
411 and then pushes that expression on to a stack. When a record contains <i>N</i>
412 subexpressions--<code>BinaryOperator</code> has two of them--those
413 expressions are popped from the top of the stack. The special STOP
414 code indicates that we have reached the end of a serialized expression
415 or statement; other expression or statement records may follow, but
416 they are part of a different expression.</p>
418 <h3 id="idtable">Identifier Table Block</h3>
420 <p>The identifier table block contains an on-disk hash table that maps
421 each identifier mentioned within the precompiled header to the
422 serialized representation of the identifier's information (e.g, the
423 <code>IdentifierInfo</code> structure). The serialized representation
424 contains:</p>
426 <ul>
427 <li>The actual identifier string.</li>
428 <li>Flags that describe whether this identifier is the name of a
429 built-in, a poisoned identifier, an extension token, or a
430 macro.</li>
431 <li>If the identifier names a macro, the offset of the macro
432 definition within the <a href="#preprocessor">preprocessor
433 block</a>.</li>
434 <li>If the identifier names one or more declarations visible from
435 translation unit scope, the <a href="#decls">declaration IDs</a> of these
436 declarations.</li>
437 </ul>
439 <p>When a precompiled header is loaded, the precompiled header
440 mechanism introduces itself into the identifier table as an external
441 lookup source. Thus, when the user program refers to an identifier
442 that has not yet been seen, Clang will perform a lookup into the
443 identifier table. If an identifier is found, its contents (macro
444 definitions, flags, top-level declarations, etc.) will be deserialized, at which point the corresponding <code>IdentifierInfo</code> structure will have the same contents it would have after parsing the headers in the precompiled header.</p>
446 <p>Within the PCH file, the identifiers used to name declarations are represented with an integral value. A separate table provides a mapping from this integral value (the identifier ID) to the location within the on-disk
447 hash table where that identifier is stored. This mapping is used when
448 deserializing the name of a declaration, the identifier of a token, or
449 any other construct in the PCH file that refers to a name.</p>
451 <h3 id="method-pool">Method Pool Block</h3>
453 <p>The method pool block is represented as an on-disk hash table that
454 serves two purposes: it provides a mapping from the names of
455 Objective-C selectors to the set of Objective-C instance and class
456 methods that have that particular selector (which is required for
457 semantic analysis in Objective-C) and also stores all of the selectors
458 used by entities within the precompiled header. The design of the
459 method pool is similar to that of the <a href="#idtable">identifier
460 table</a>: the first time a particular selector is formed during the
461 compilation of the program, Clang will search in the on-disk hash
462 table of selectors; if found, Clang will read the Objective-C methods
463 associated with that selector into the appropriate front-end data
464 structure (<code>Sema::InstanceMethodPool</code> and
465 <code>Sema::FactoryMethodPool</code> for instance and class methods,
466 respectively).</p>
468 <p>As with identifiers, selectors are represented by numeric values
469 within the PCH file. A separate index maps these numeric selector
470 values to the offset of the selector within the on-disk hash table,
471 and will be used when de-serializing an Objective-C method declaration
472 (or other Objective-C construct) that refers to the selector.</p>
474 <h2 id="tendrils">Precompiled Header Integration Points</h2>
476 <p>The "lazy" deserialization behavior of precompiled headers requires
477 their integration into several completely different submodules of
478 Clang. For example, lazily deserializing the declarations during name
479 lookup requires that the name-lookup routines be able to query the
480 precompiled header to find entities within the PCH file.</p>
482 <p>For each Clang data structure that requires direct interaction with
483 the precompiled header logic, there is an abstract class that provides
484 the interface between the two modules. The <code>PCHReader</code>
485 class, which handles the loading of a precompiled header, inherits
486 from all of these abstract classes to provide lazy deserialization of
487 Clang's data structures. <code>PCHReader</code> implements the
488 following abstract classes:</p>
490 <dl>
491 <dt><code>StatSysCallCache</code></dt>
492 <dd>This abstract interface is associated with the
493 <code>FileManager</code> class, and is used whenever the file
494 manager is going to perform a <code>stat()</code> system call.</dd>
496 <dt><code>ExternalSLocEntrySource</code></dt>
497 <dd>This abstract interface is associated with the
498 <code>SourceManager</code> class, and is used whenever the
499 <a href="#sourcemgr">source manager</a> needs to load the details
500 of a file, buffer, or macro instantiation.</dd>
502 <dt><code>IdentifierInfoLookup</code></dt>
503 <dd>This abstract interface is associated with the
504 <code>IdentifierTable</code> class, and is used whenever the
505 program source refers to an identifier that has not yet been seen.
506 In this case, the precompiled header implementation searches for
507 this identifier within its <a href="#idtable">identifier table</a>
508 to load any top-level declarations or macros associated with that
509 identifier.</dd>
511 <dt><code>ExternalASTSource</code></dt>
512 <dd>This abstract interface is associated with the
513 <code>ASTContext</code> class, and is used whenever the abstract
514 syntax tree nodes need to loaded from the precompiled header. It
515 provides the ability to de-serialize declarations and types
516 identified by their numeric values, read the bodies of functions
517 when required, and read the declarations stored within a
518 declaration context (either for iteration or for name lookup).</dd>
520 <dt><code>ExternalSemaSource</code></dt>
521 <dd>This abstract interface is associated with the <code>Sema</code>
522 class, and is used whenever semantic analysis needs to read
523 information from the <a href="#methodpool">global method
524 pool</a>.</dd>
525 </dl>
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