The minimum compiler version required for building LLVM has been raised to 4.8 for GCC and 2015 for Visual Studio.
The C API functions LLVMAddFunctionAttr, LLVMGetFunctionAttr, LLVMRemoveFunctionAttr, LLVMAddAttribute, LLVMRemoveAttribute, LLVMGetAttribute, LLVMAddInstrAttribute and LLVMRemoveInstrAttribute have been removed.
The C API enum LLVMAttribute has been deleted.
The definition and uses of LLVM_ATRIBUTE_UNUSED_RESULT in the LLVM source were replaced with LLVM_NODISCARD, which matches the C++17 [[nodiscard]] semantics rather than gcc’s __attribute__((warn_unused_result)).
The Timer related APIs now expect a Name and Description. When upgrading code the previously used names should become descriptions and a short name in the style of a programming language identifier should be added.
LLVM now handles invariant.group across different basic blocks, which makes it possible to devirtualize virtual calls inside loops.
The aggressive dead code elimination phase (“adce”) now removes branches which do not effect program behavior. Loops are retained by default since they may be infinite but these can also be removed with LLVM option -adce-remove-loops when the loop body otherwise has no live operations.
The llvm-cov tool can now export coverage data as json. Its html output mode has also improved.
The LLVMContext gains a new runtime check (see LLVMContext::discardValueNames()) that can be set to discard Value names (other than GlobalValue). This is intended to be used in release builds by clients that are interested in saving CPU/memory as much as possible.
There is no longer a “global context” available in LLVM, except for the C API.
The autoconf build system has been removed in favor of CMake. LLVM 3.9 requires CMake 3.4.3 or later to build. For information about using CMake please see the documentation on Building LLVM with CMake. For information about the CMake language there is also a CMake Primer document available.
C API functions LLVMParseBitcode, LLVMParseBitcodeInContext, LLVMGetBitcodeModuleInContext and LLVMGetBitcodeModule having been removed. LLVMGetTargetMachineData has been removed (use LLVMGetDataLayout instead).
The C API function LLVMLinkModules has been removed.
The C API function LLVMAddTargetData has been removed.
The C API function LLVMGetDataLayout is deprecated in favor of LLVMGetDataLayoutStr.
The C API enum LLVMAttribute and associated API is deprecated in favor of the new LLVMAttributeRef API. The deprecated functions are LLVMAddFunctionAttr, LLVMAddTargetDependentFunctionAttr, LLVMRemoveFunctionAttr, LLVMGetFunctionAttr, LLVMAddAttribute, LLVMRemoveAttribute, LLVMGetAttribute, LLVMAddInstrAttribute, LLVMRemoveInstrAttribute and LLVMSetInstrParamAlignment.
TargetFrameLowering::eliminateCallFramePseudoInstr now returns an iterator to the next instruction instead of void. Targets that previously did MBB.erase(I); return; now probably want return MBB.erase(I);.
SelectionDAGISel::Select now returns void. Out-of-tree targets will need to be updated to replace the argument node and remove any dead nodes in cases where they currently return an SDNode * from this interface.
Added the MemorySSA analysis, which hopes to replace MemoryDependenceAnalysis. It should provide higher-quality results than MemDep, and be algorithmically faster than MemDep. Currently, GVNHoist (which is off by default) makes use of MemorySSA.
The minimum density for lowering switches with jump tables has been reduced from 40% to 10% for functions which are not marked optsize (that is, compiled with -Os).
* Drop CppBackend. It is removed.
Changelog:
* GCC ABI Tag
* LLVM IR: new intrinsics etc.
* Change LLVM IPO model
* Support ThinLTO
* Improve the ARM targets, ARMv8.2-A support etc.
* Improve the MIPS targets
* Improve the PowerPC target, default optim O3 to O2
* Improve the X86 target, SKylake AVX-512 etc.
* Improve the AMDGPU, better support for Mesa 12
