docs/GettingStartedVS.html

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   6   <title>Getting Started with LLVM System for Microsoft Visual Studio</title>
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  11 <div class="doc_title">
  12   Getting Started with the LLVM System using Microsoft Visual Studio
  13 </div>
  14
  15 <ul>
  16   <li><a href="#overview">Overview</a>
  17   <li><a href="#requirements">Requirements</a>
  18     <ol>
  19       <li><a href="#hardware">Hardware</a>
  20       <li><a href="#software">Software</a>
  21     </ol></li>
  22   <li><a href="#quickstart">Getting Started</a>
  23   <li><a href="#tutorial">An Example Using the LLVM Tool Chain</a>
  24   <li><a href="#problems">Common Problems</a>
  25   <li><a href="#links">Links</a>
  26 </ul>
  27
  28 <div class="doc_author">
  29   <p>Written by: <a href="http://llvm.org">The LLVM Team</a></p>
  30 </div>
  31
  32
  33 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
  34 <div class="doc_section">
  35   <a name="overview"><b>Overview</b></a>
  36 </div>
  37 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
  38
  39 <div class="doc_text">
  40
  41   <p>Welcome to LLVM on Windows! This document only covers LLVM on Windows using
  42   Visual Studio, not mingw or cygwin. In order to get started, you first need to
  43   know some basic information.</p>
  44
  45   <p>There are many different projects that compose LLVM. The first is the LLVM
  46   suite. This contains all of the tools, libraries, and header files needed to
  47   use the low level virtual machine. It contains an assembler, disassembler,
  48   bitcode analyzer and bitcode optimizer. It also contains a test suite that can
  49   be used to test the LLVM tools.</p>
  50
  51   <p>Another useful project on Windows is
  52   <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/">clang</a>. Clang is a C family
  53   ([Objective]C/C++) compiler. Clang mostly works on Windows, but does not
  54   currently understand all of the Microsoft extensions to C and C++. Because of
  55   this, clang cannot parse the C++ standard library included with Visual Studio,
  56   nor parts of the Windows Platform SDK. However, most standard C programs do
  57   compile. Clang can be used to emit bitcode, directly emit object files or
  58   even linked executables using Visual Studio's <tt>link.exe</tt></p>
  59
  60   <p>The large LLVM test suite cannot be run on the Visual Studio port at this
  61   time.</p>
  62
  63   <p>Most of the tools build and work.  <tt>bugpoint</tt> does build, but does
  64   not work.</p>
  65
  66   <p>Additional information about the LLVM directory structure and tool chain
  67   can be found on the main <a href="GettingStarted.html">Getting Started</a>
  68   page.</p>
  69
  70 </div>
  71
  72 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
  73 <div class="doc_section">
  74   <a name="requirements"><b>Requirements</b></a>
  75 </div>
  76 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
  77
  78 <div class="doc_text">
  79
  80   <p>Before you begin to use the LLVM system, review the requirements given
  81   below.  This may save you some trouble by knowing ahead of time what hardware
  82   and software you will need.</p>
  83
  84 </div>
  85
  86 <!-- ======================================================================= -->
  87 <div class="doc_subsection">
  88   <a name="hardware"><b>Hardware</b></a>
  89 </div>
  90
  91 <div class="doc_text">
  92
  93   <p>Any system that can adequately run Visual Studio .NET 2005 SP1 is fine.
  94   The LLVM source tree and object files, libraries and executables will consume
  95   approximately 3GB.</p>
  96
  97 </div>
  98
  99 <!-- ======================================================================= -->
 100 <div class="doc_subsection"><a name="software"><b>Software</b></a></div>
 101 <div class="doc_text">
 102
 103   <p>You will need Visual Studio .NET 2005 SP1 or higher.  The VS2005 SP1
 104   beta and the normal VS2005 still have bugs that are not completely
 105   compatible.  Earlier versions of Visual Studio do not support the C++ standard
 106   well enough and will not work.</p>
 107
 108   <p>You will also need the <a href="http://www.cmake.org/">CMake</a> build
 109   system since it generates the project files you will use to build with.</p>
 110
 111   <p>If you would like to run the LLVM tests you will need
 112   <a href="http://www.python.org/">Python</a>. Versions 2.4-2.7 are known to
 113   work. You will need <a href="http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/">"GnuWin32"</a>
 114   tools, too.</p>
 115
 116   <p>Do not install the LLVM directory tree into a path containing spaces (e.g.
 117   C:\Documents and Settings\...) as the configure step will fail.</p>
 118
 119 </div>
 120
 121 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
 122 <div class="doc_section">
 123   <a name="quickstart"><b>Getting Started</b></a>
 124 </div>
 125 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
 126
 127 <div class="doc_text">
 128
 129 <p>Here's the short story for getting up and running quickly with LLVM:</p>
 130
 131 <ol>
 132   <li>Read the documentation.</li>
 133   <li>Seriously, read the documentation.</li>
 134   <li>Remember that you were warned twice about reading the documentation.</li>
 135
 136   <li>Get the Source Code
 137   <ul>
 138     <li>With the distributed files:
 139     <ol>
 140       <li><tt>cd <i>where-you-want-llvm-to-live</i></tt>
 141       <li><tt>gunzip --stdout llvm-<i>version</i>.tar.gz | tar -xvf -</tt>
 142       <i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;or use WinZip</i>
 143       <li><tt>cd llvm</tt></li>
 144     </ol></li>
 145
 146     <li>With anonymous Subversion access:
 147     <ol>
 148       <li><tt>cd <i>where-you-want-llvm-to-live</i></tt></li>
 149       <li><tt>svn co http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/llvm/trunk llvm</tt></li>
 150       <li><tt>cd llvm</tt></li>
 151     </ol></li>
 152   </ul></li>
 153
 154   <li> Use <a href="http://www.cmake.org/">CMake</a> to generate up-to-date
 155     project files:
 156     <ul>
 157       <li>Once CMake is installed then the simplest way is to just start the
 158         CMake GUI, select the directory where you have LLVM extracted to, and the
 159         default options should all be fine.  One option you may really want to
 160         change, regardless of anything else, might be the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
 161         setting to select a directory to INSTALL to once compiling is complete,
 162         although installation is not mandatory for using LLVM.  Another important
 163         option is LLVM_TARGETS_TO_BUILD, which controls the LLVM target
 164         architectures that are included on the build.
 165       <li>See the <a href="CMake.html">LLVM CMake guide</a> for
 166         detailed information about how to configure the LLVM
 167         build.</li>
 168     </ul>
 169   </li>
 170
 171   <li>Start Visual Studio
 172   <ul>
 173     <li>In the directory you created the project files will have
 174     an <tt>llvm.sln</tt> file, just double-click on that to open
 175     Visual Studio.</li>
 176   </ul></li>
 177
 178   <li>Build the LLVM Suite:
 179   <ul>
 180     <li>The projects may still be built individually, but
 181     to build them all do not just select all of them in batch build (as some
 182     are meant as configuration projects), but rather select and build just
 183     the ALL_BUILD project to build everything, or the INSTALL project, which
 184     first builds the ALL_BUILD project, then installs the LLVM headers, libs,
 185     and other useful things to the directory set by the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
 186     setting when you first configured CMake.</li>
 187     <li>The Fibonacci project is a sample program that uses the JIT.
 188     Modify the project's debugging properties to provide a numeric
 189     command line argument or run it from the command line.  The
 190     program will print the corresponding fibonacci value.</li>
 191   </ul></li>
 192
 193   <li>Test LLVM on Visual Studio:
 194   <ul>
 195     <li>If %PATH% does not contain GnuWin32, you may specify LLVM_LIT_TOOLS_DIR
 196     on CMake for the path to GnuWin32.</li>
 197     <li>You can run LLVM tests to build the project "check".</li>
 198   </ul>
 199   </li>
 200
 201   <!-- FIXME: Is it up-to-date? -->
 202   <li>Test LLVM:
 203   <ul>
 204     <li>The LLVM tests can be run by <tt>cd</tt>ing to the llvm source directory
 205         and running:
 206
 207 <div class="doc_code">
 208 <pre>
 209 % llvm-lit test
 210 </pre>
 211 </div>
 212
 213     <p>Note that quite a few of these test will fail.</p>
 214     </li>
 215
 216     <li>A specific test or test directory can be run with:</li>
 217
 218 <div class="doc_code">
 219 <pre>
 220 % llvm-lit test/path/to/test
 221 </pre>
 222 </div>
 223
 224 </ol>
 225
 226 </div>
 227
 228 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
 229 <div class="doc_section">
 230   <a name="tutorial">An Example Using the LLVM Tool Chain</a>
 231 </div>
 232 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
 233
 234 <div class="doc_text">
 235
 236 <ol>
 237   <li><p>First, create a simple C file, name it 'hello.c':</p>
 238
 239 <div class="doc_code">
 240 <pre>
 241 #include &lt;stdio.h&gt;
 242 int main() {
 243   printf("hello world\n");
 244   return 0;
 245 }
 246 </pre></div></li>
 247
 248   <li><p>Next, compile the C file into a LLVM bitcode file:</p>
 249
 250 <div class="doc_code">
 251 <pre>
 252 % clang -c hello.c -emit-llvm -o hello.bc
 253 </pre>
 254 </div>
 255
 256       <p>This will create the result file <tt>hello.bc</tt> which is the LLVM
 257          bitcode that corresponds the the compiled program and the library
 258          facilities that it required.  You can execute this file directly using
 259          <tt>lli</tt> tool, compile it to native assembly with the <tt>llc</tt>,
 260          optimize or analyze it further with the <tt>opt</tt> tool, etc.</p>
 261
 262       <p>Alternatively you can directly output an executable with clang with:
 263       </p>
 264
 265 <div class="doc_code">
 266 <pre>
 267 % clang hello.c -o hello.exe
 268 </pre>
 269 </div>
 270
 271   <p>The <tt>-o hello.exe</tt> is required because clang currently outputs
 272   <tt>a.out</tt> when neither <tt>-o</tt> nor <tt>-c</tt> are given.</p>
 273
 274   <li><p>Run the program using the just-in-time compiler:</p>
 275
 276 <div class="doc_code">
 277 <pre>
 278 % lli hello.bc
 279 </pre>
 280 </div>
 281
 282   <li><p>Use the <tt>llvm-dis</tt> utility to take a look at the LLVM assembly
 283       code:</p>
 284
 285 <div class="doc_code">
 286 <pre>
 287 % llvm-dis &lt; hello.bc | more
 288 </pre>
 289 </div></li>
 290
 291   <li><p>Compile the program to object code using the LLC code generator:</p>
 292
 293 <div class="doc_code">
 294 <pre>
 295 % llc -filetype=obj hello.bc
 296 </pre>
 297 </div></li>
 298
 299   <li><p>Link to binary using Microsoft link:</p>
 300
 301 <div class="doc_code">
 302 <pre>
 303 % link hello.obj -defaultlib:libcmt
 304 </pre>
 305 </div>
 306
 307   <li><p>Execute the native code program:</p>
 308
 309 <div class="doc_code">
 310 <pre>
 311 % hello.exe
 312 </pre>
 313 </div></li>
 314 </ol>
 315
 316 </div>
 317
 318 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
 319 <div class="doc_section">
 320   <a name="problems">Common Problems</a>
 321 </div>
 322 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
 323
 324 <div class="doc_text">
 325
 326 <p>If you are having problems building or using LLVM, or if you have any other
 327 general questions about LLVM, please consult the <a href="FAQ.html">Frequently
 328 Asked Questions</a> page.</p>
 329
 330 </div>
 331
 332 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
 333 <div class="doc_section">
 334   <a name="links">Links</a>
 335 </div>
 336 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
 337
 338 <div class="doc_text">
 339
 340 <p>This document is just an <b>introduction</b> to how to use LLVM to do
 341 some simple things... there are many more interesting and complicated things
 342 that you can do that aren't documented here (but we'll gladly accept a patch
 343 if you want to write something up!).  For more information about LLVM, check
 344 out:</p>
 345
 346 <ul>
 347   <li><a href="http://llvm.org/">LLVM homepage</a></li>
 348   <li><a href="http://llvm.org/doxygen/">LLVM doxygen tree</a></li>
 349 </ul>
 350
 351 </div>
 352
 353 <!-- *********************************************************************** -->
 354
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