I did some work to integrate LLVM and Clang with VW. I'm moving this  
to Squeak. For the platforms supported by LLVM this allows inline C/ 
ObjC/C++ (although C++ is early days yet), dynamically compiled and  
loaded, and highly optimized platform-independent SSA-based native  
code generation. As a side effect it can provide an optimized FFI  
based on jitted stubs/trampolines. I did this (trivially) for callout  
in VW, but didn't bother about callbacks. You can also use Clang to  
parse platform headers (and code), which you can obviously include in  
inline C, and also produce a parse tree with various degrees of  
semantic analysis, which you can then reflect on. Clang goes to  
extraordinary lengths to maintain source correspondence, which is an  
added bonus in interactive environment such as Smalltalk.

Eliot's aware of that work. AFAIK he decided against using LLVM for  
Cog because Qwak wanted something that didn't increase the VM  
footprint, although he probably had some other reasons as well. PICs  
were an issue he raised, but that can be dealt with - in fact, by  
using runtime type recording at the call sites, plus some techniques  
used in multi-method dispatch for CLOS, you can optimize for both  
sides of a double dispatch, which would given at the very least highly  
optimized numeric operations. LLVM also does cool link time  
optimization and inlining, and I've got this (largely unformed) idea  
that the type-based specialisation could possibly trickle back along a  
call chain, resulting in block-aggregation that would expose more  
opportunity for optimization by delimiting regions of known type  
information. It might be however that such regions never practically  
get above a certain size.

I'd like to investigate using LLVM to make plugins that are  
dynamically compiled and loaded (i.e. not via VMMaker). A further  
thought is that the VM could be regenerated, compiled and switched  
whilst running. This leads obviously to a *very* basic cross-platform  
headless VM that regenerates itself upon loading, optimized for the  
platform it's running on. Of course you'd cache this.

Benefits of LLVM/Clang over roll-your-own native code generation are  
a) the significant optimization systems; b) cross-platform code  
generation; and c) dynamic C-family integration.

And finally, LLVM/Clang are two of the most beautifully, cleanly  
architected and written pieces of C++ code I've ever seen. No, I'm not  
a contributor :)

Anyone else interested in this?

On 16/10/2008, at 6:33 PM, Alexandre Bergel wrote:

> Talking about interoperability. I did some experiment a while ago  
> about making Squeak talk to Java using sockets. Java classes are  
> accessible within Squeak, and reflection is used to invoke methods.
> People interested in this could ask for further info.
>
> Cheers,
> Alexandre
>
> On 16 Oct 2008, at 09:55, Lukas Renggli wrote:
>
>>> But then, the new FFI of Eliot seems to be far, far better then  
>>> the old
>>> one.
>>> It would be nice to have that instead. E.g, it supports callbacks  
>>> nicely
>>> and
>>> is much faster.
>>
>> Go Eliot, go! It is crucial that Smalltalk gets better bindings with
>> the outside world. It should be easy (as with Python or Ruby) to
>> integrate some external C library.
>>
>> I hope the new FFI doesn't need to hack the Smalltalk language and  
>> compiler.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Lukas
>>
>> -- 
>> Lukas Renggli
>> http://www.lukas-renggli.ch
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Pharo-project mailing list
>> Pharo-project at lists.gforge.inria.fr
>> http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
>>
>
> -- 
> _,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:
> Alexandre Bergel  http://www.bergel.eu
> ^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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Antony Blakey
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