Status? Help Needed?

Clang Frontend
1

Hello,
Chris gave me a link to this project about the work on the c++ frontend for llvm.

* I wonder if I could ask... what is the status of the c++ frontend?
* Also, what might be a general idea for when it might near a usable state (like less than 6 months, less than a year, less than 5 years, or)?
* At this point do you have any need for more programmers to help out in a specific area? If so, what areas specifically?

2

Hello,
Chris gave me a link to this project about the work on the c++ frontend for llvm.

* I wonder if I could ask... what is the status of the c++ frontend?

C++ support is a very, very, early state. It is basically C with bool, the C++ casts (static_cast etc), and some reference support.

* Also, what might be a general idea for when it might near a usable state (like less than 6 months, less than a year, less than 5 years, or)?

Right now, we don't have anyone seriously working on it. I'd guess 2-3 years, but "sooner if we have help" :). We hope to have C very solid over the next year.

* At this point do you have any need for more programmers to help out in a specific area? If so, what areas specifically?

There are lots of areas we can use help on. C is starting to get pretty solid when used at -fsyntax-only. This means that it parses and typechecks most code, rejecting invalid things. With C there are several areas we can use help with:

1. Testing to make sure we don't miss reporting some error conditions.
2. Compiling lots of C code and making sure -fsyntax-only accepts them.
3. Code generation (-emit-llvm) is still missing a lot. Contributions to help with this are certainly welcome.
4. Searching the codebase for FIXME's and fixing them :slight_smile:

As far as C++ support goes, there is still a lot to do. The aforementioned pieces that we do support are missing some pieces: notably code generation support. Any help making these solid is appreciated.

----
Some other info...
I was first made aware of llvm on the Haiku OS forum; I was inquiring about a non-GPL compiler. :slight_smile: So far this seems to be one of the few, if not the only, project that actually seems like it might achieve that goal. Although my main interest was the license, I'd also love to see something like this become a standard for the Haiku OS.... For these reasons, I have quite a bit of interest in seeing this project succeed. Although, I obviously understand very little about this stuff (which can probably annoy you all) I still would like to offer to help if you ever were in need of someone to do something on a non-coding level. I doubt you even want help in that area since it's preferable to only have people involved who understand the compiler, but I just thought I'd mention it anyways.

If you're interested in non-coding tasks, I'd suggest using it to compile lots of code (to find bugs), working on documentation, working on the web page (http://clang.llvm.org is pretty sad ;-), spreading the word to that might be interested, etc.

-Chris