How to get started with the LLVM C API

https://pauladamsmith.com/blog/2015/01/how-to-get-started-with-llvm-c-api.html

by signa11 • 12 years ago

65 12 12 years ago

pauladamsmith.com

NonEUCitizen• 12 years ago

Should be this url instead:

https://pauladamsmith.com/blog/2015/01/how-to-get-started-wi...

sctb• 12 years ago

Thanks, we updated the URL.

valleyer• 12 years ago

Their C API is so much cleaner looking than the C++ one, imo. I avoided it so far thinking that once I want to use something not covered in the C API, I don’t want to do a big refactor. Is that a rational fear?

adrianm• 12 years ago

I think that is still a valid concern. Features first hit the C++ API and then slowly migrate to a C expressible subset.

rubiquity• 12 years ago

This seems to happen a lot to projects that are written in C++ but have C APIs. Another good example of this would be ZeroMQ. I wonder why this happens.

zw• 12 years ago

If I remember correctly from an article many years ago, they want the C++ API to be high-level and fast-moving; the C API exists so that they can support low-level use and almost all clients while only maintaining one API well.

alexchamberlain2• 12 years ago

C++ is an awesome languages for writing algorithms and low level memory manipulation, such as network protocols. The big problem is the ABI sucks, although on Linux the story is better than elsewhere. Even on Linux mangling is just confusing.

kozlinov• 12 years ago

This is a psychological effect caused by some deficiencies in human thinking. People feel obliged to use OOP in full once it is available and shit all over the place with classes, interfaces and inheritance. In a more limited language it is harder to multiply entities, so they just do not do it. So it may make sense to add some artificially crafted pain into a language to force people to write less code.

Guthur• 12 years ago

Interestingly Martin Sustrik, one of the original ZeroMQ authors, expressed regret for having chosen C++ for ZeroMQ.

http://250bpm.com/blog:4 http://250bpm.com/blog:8

alexchamberlain2• 12 years ago

I'm really enjoying the proliferation of compiler articles, based on LLVM. I would, however, like to see the other side too: if I write code in C++ or Python, how can I leverage LLVM (and its various compilers) call out to code written in other (possibly brand new) languages?

I really hope we see more DSLs being written, and that it is easy to integrate with them on the back of LLVM.

How to get started with the LLVM C API

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