LLVM Essentials

LLVM tools and using them in the command line

Until now, we have understood what LLVM IR (human readable form) is and how it can be used to represent a high-level language. Now, we will take a look at some of the tools that LLVM provides so that we can play around with this IR converting to other formats and back again to the original form. Let's take a look at these tools one by one along with examples.

• llvm-as: This is the LLVM assembler that takes LLVM IR in assembly form (human readable) and converts it to bitcode format. Use the preceding add.ll as an example to convert it into bitcode. To know more about the LLVM Bitcode file format refer to http://llvm.org/docs/BitCodeFormat.html

  $ llvm-as add.ll –o add.bc
  

  To view the content of this bitcode ...