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LLVM 8.0 Released With Cascade Lake Support, Better Diagnostics, More OpenMP/OpenCL (phoronix.com)

Posted by msmash on from the it's-here dept.

After being delayed for the better part of one month, LLVM 8.0 officially is finally available. From a report: LLVM release manager Hans Wennborg announced the release a few minutes ago and summed up this half-year update to LLVM and its sub-project as: "speculative load hardening, concurrent compilation in the ORC JIT API, no longer experimental WebAssembly target, a Clang option to initialize automatic variables, improved pre-compiled header support in clang-cl, the /Zc:dllexportInlines- flag, RISC-V support in lld. And as usual, many bug fixes, optimization and diagnostics improvements, etc."

15 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Wondered what WebAssembly was... by SuperKendall · · Score: 2, Informative

    I was curious what WebAssembly was, so I hunted down an FAQ.

    Summary is that WebAssembly is a binary format to use in place of Javascript, to avoid parsing time.

    Really happy to see LLVM carry on, what a great project!

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Wondered what WebAssembly was... by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      Really happy to see LLVM carry on, what a great project!

      Well, that's because they've got a lot of rich sponsors - Apple, Qualcomm, etc. Basically what happened was GPLv3 and Apple spent a ton of money investing in alternative free compiler suites, of which LLVM was the most complete and well structured alternative. (That's why Clang is credited to Apple).

      Of course, the favorable licensing terms of LLVM didn't hurt, either (I think it's MIT or BSD?).

      So the fact it's easy to integrate into practically everything (IDEs and other things), has a good license, etc., has basically exploded its popularity. It's used in everything from the Xcode IDE where its code parsing engine helps syntax and error highlighting (as well as dynamic recompilation as you fix the error), but drivers needing to compile OpenCL or other code down to GPU native machine code.

      WebAssembly is what makes possible projects like DOSbox that runs in a browser (see Internet Archive for demos) as well as many other things that run in a browser that were formerly C programs.

    2. Re:Wondered what WebAssembly was... by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      Of course, the favorable licensing terms of LLVM didn't hurt, either (I think it's MIT or BSD?).

      It was originally: University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License: http://releases.llvm.org/2.8/L...

      But have been migrating to Apache 2.0 with "LLVM Exception": https://llvm.org/LICENSE.txt

    3. Re:Wondered what WebAssembly was... by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      Nothing to do with GPLv3, it was GPL in general Apple and some others had an ideological aversion to. (GPLv3 fixed many of the issues Apple et al complained about, but it wasn't considered enough.)

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    4. Re:Wondered what WebAssembly was... by ShreeJi · · Score: 1

      happy to see LLVM carry on, what a great project!Well, that's because they've got a lot of rich sponsors - Apple, Qualcomm, etc. Basically https://www.fikr.co.in/

  2. The orc and the elf by cerberusss · · Score: 2

    concurrent compilation in the ORC JIT API

    Finally. For years, we've had ELFs in our binaries and I'm very happy that ORCs now have their own API.

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    8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
    1. Re:The orc and the elf by F.Ultra · · Score: 1

      Don't forget that DWARF:s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  3. Define terms like a real tech news website by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Informative

    LLVM is a set of compiler toolchain components, it is used to provide the middle tier of a compiler system for many languages. It's written in C++

    1. Re:Define terms like a real tech news website by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      Having a low user ID is overrated

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    2. Re:Define terms like a real tech news website by _merlin · · Score: 1

      Half a million is a low UID now? I remember being the n00b account here, and my UID is like a third of his. What does that make me now?

    3. Re:Define terms like a real tech news website by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      lots of definitions:

      https://www.google.com/search?...

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    4. Re:Define terms like a real tech news website by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      And a good tech news site with properly written summaries won't make readers use that. In other words, ones not written by autists like you.

    5. Re:Define terms like a real tech news website by DeVilla · · Score: 1

      Don't let it go to your head. We were all n00bs once.

  4. What are the OpenMP/OpenCL improvement? by godrik · · Score: 1

    The release note does not seem to mention OpenMP or OpenCL. The release note does not contain the string "OpenMP" or the string "OpenCL". Am I missing something obvious? What has actually changed in that regard?

    1. Re:What are the OpenMP/OpenCL improvement? by complete+loony · · Score: 1

      LLVM is a big project, and not all developers with commit access contribute text to the release notes.

      If you need to know exactly what changed you could search the raw history, or diff the release tags from the github mirror.

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      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.