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authormike-m <mikem.llvm@gmail.com>2010-05-06 23:45:43 +0000
committermike-m <mikem.llvm@gmail.com>2010-05-06 23:45:43 +0000
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Overhauled llvm/clang docs builds. Closes PR6613.
NOTE: 2nd part changeset for cfe trunk to follow. *** PRE-PATCH ISSUES ADDRESSED - clang api docs fail build from objdir - clang/llvm api docs collide in install PREFIX/ - clang/llvm main docs collide in install - clang/llvm main docs have full of hard coded destination assumptions and make use of absolute root in static html files; namely CommandGuide tools hard codes a website destination for cross references and some html cross references assume website root paths *** IMPROVEMENTS - bumped Doxygen from 1.4.x -> 1.6.3 - splits llvm/clang docs into 'main' and 'api' (doxygen) build trees - provide consistent, reliable doc builds for both main+api docs - support buid vs. install vs. website intentions - support objdir builds - document targets with 'make help' - correct clean and uninstall operations - use recursive dir delete only where absolutely necessary - added call function fn.RMRF which safeguards against botched 'rm -rf'; if any target (or any variable is evaluated) which attempts to remove any dirs which match a hard-coded 'safelist', a verbose error will be printed and make will error-stop. git-svn-id: https://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/llvm/trunk@103213 91177308-0d34-0410-b5e6-96231b3b80d8
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-<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
- "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
-<html>
-<head>
- <title>System Library</title>
- <link rel="stylesheet" href="llvm.css" type="text/css">
-</head>
-<body>
-
-<div class="doc_title">System Library</div>
-<ul>
- <li><a href="#abstract">Abstract</a></li>
- <li><a href="#requirements">Keeping LLVM Portable</a>
- <ol>
- <li><a href="#headers">Don't Include System Headers</a></li>
- <li><a href="#expose">Don't Expose System Headers</a></li>
- <li><a href="#c_headers">Allow Standard C Header Files</a></li>
- <li><a href="#cpp_headers">Allow Standard C++ Header Files</a></li>
- <li><a href="#highlev">High-Level Interface</a></li>
- <li><a href="#nofunc">No Exposed Functions</a></li>
- <li><a href="#nodata">No Exposed Data</a></li>
- <li><a href="#nodupl">No Duplicate Implementations</a></li>
- <li><a href="#nounused">No Unused Functionality</a></li>
- <li><a href="#virtuals">No Virtual Methods</a></li>
- <li><a href="#softerrors">Minimize Soft Errors</a></li>
- <li><a href="#throw_spec">No throw() Specifications</a></li>
- <li><a href="#organization">Code Organization</a></li>
- <li><a href="#semantics">Consistent Semantics</a></li>
- <li><a href="#bug">Tracking Bugzilla Bug: 351</a></li>
- </ol></li>
-</ul>
-
-<div class="doc_author">
- <p>Written by <a href="mailto:rspencer@x10sys.com">Reid Spencer</a></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
-<div class="doc_section"><a name="abstract">Abstract</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>This document provides some details on LLVM's System Library, located in
- the source at <tt>lib/System</tt> and <tt>include/llvm/System</tt>. The
- library's purpose is to shield LLVM from the differences between operating
- systems for the few services LLVM needs from the operating system. Much of
- LLVM is written using portability features of standard C++. However, in a few
- areas, system dependent facilities are needed and the System Library is the
- wrapper around those system calls.</p>
- <p>By centralizing LLVM's use of operating system interfaces, we make it
- possible for the LLVM tool chain and runtime libraries to be more easily
- ported to new platforms since (theoretically) only <tt>lib/System</tt> needs
- to be ported. This library also unclutters the rest of LLVM from #ifdef use
- and special cases for specific operating systems. Such uses are replaced
- with simple calls to the interfaces provided in <tt>include/llvm/System</tt>.
- </p>
- <p>Note that the System Library is not intended to be a complete operating
- system wrapper (such as the Adaptive Communications Environment (ACE) or
- Apache Portable Runtime (APR)), but only provides the functionality necessary
- to support LLVM.
- <p>The System Library was written by Reid Spencer who formulated the
- design based on similar work originating from the eXtensible Programming
- System (XPS). Several people helped with the effort; especially,
- Jeff Cohen and Henrik Bach on the Win32 port.</p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
-<div class="doc_section">
- <a name="requirements">Keeping LLVM Portable</a>
-</div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>In order to keep LLVM portable, LLVM developers should adhere to a set of
- portability rules associated with the System Library. Adherence to these rules
- should help the System Library achieve its goal of shielding LLVM from the
- variations in operating system interfaces and doing so efficiently. The
- following sections define the rules needed to fulfill this objective.</p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="headers">Don't Include System Headers</a>
-</div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>Except in <tt>lib/System</tt>, no LLVM source code should directly
- <tt>#include</tt> a system header. Care has been taken to remove all such
- <tt>#includes</tt> from LLVM while <tt>lib/System</tt> was being
- developed. Specifically this means that header files like "unistd.h",
- "windows.h", "stdio.h", and "string.h" are forbidden to be included by LLVM
- source code outside the implementation of <tt>lib/System</tt>.</p>
- <p>To obtain system-dependent functionality, existing interfaces to the system
- found in <tt>include/llvm/System</tt> should be used. If an appropriate
- interface is not available, it should be added to <tt>include/llvm/System</tt>
- and implemented in <tt>lib/System</tt> for all supported platforms.</p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="expose">Don't Expose System Headers</a>
-</div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>The System Library must shield LLVM from <em>all</em> system headers. To
- obtain system level functionality, LLVM source must
- <tt>#include "llvm/System/Thing.h"</tt> and nothing else. This means that
- <tt>Thing.h</tt> cannot expose any system header files. This protects LLVM
- from accidentally using system specific functionality and only allows it
- via the <tt>lib/System</tt> interface.</p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="c_headers">Use Standard C Headers</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>The <em>standard</em> C headers (the ones beginning with "c") are allowed
- to be exposed through the <tt>lib/System</tt> interface. These headers and
- the things they declare are considered to be platform agnostic. LLVM source
- files may include them directly or obtain their inclusion through
- <tt>lib/System</tt> interfaces.</p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="cpp_headers">Use Standard C++ Headers</a>
-</div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>The <em>standard</em> C++ headers from the standard C++ library and
- standard template library may be exposed through the <tt>lib/System</tt>
- interface. These headers and the things they declare are considered to be
- platform agnostic. LLVM source files may include them or obtain their
- inclusion through lib/System interfaces.</p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="highlev">High Level Interface</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>The entry points specified in the interface of lib/System must be aimed at
- completing some reasonably high level task needed by LLVM. We do not want to
- simply wrap each operating system call. It would be preferable to wrap several
- operating system calls that are always used in conjunction with one another by
- LLVM.</p>
- <p>For example, consider what is needed to execute a program, wait for it to
- complete, and return its result code. On Unix, this involves the following
- operating system calls: <tt>getenv, fork, execve,</tt> and <tt>wait</tt>. The
- correct thing for lib/System to provide is a function, say
- <tt>ExecuteProgramAndWait</tt>, that implements the functionality completely.
- what we don't want is wrappers for the operating system calls involved.</p>
- <p>There must <em>not</em> be a one-to-one relationship between operating
- system calls and the System library's interface. Any such interface function
- will be suspicious.</p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="nounused">No Unused Functionality</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>There must be no functionality specified in the interface of lib/System
- that isn't actually used by LLVM. We're not writing a general purpose
- operating system wrapper here, just enough to satisfy LLVM's needs. And, LLVM
- doesn't need much. This design goal aims to keep the lib/System interface
- small and understandable which should foster its actual use and adoption.</p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="nodupl">No Duplicate Implementations</a>
-</div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>The implementation of a function for a given platform must be written
- exactly once. This implies that it must be possible to apply a function's
- implementation to multiple operating systems if those operating systems can
- share the same implementation. This rule applies to the set of operating
- systems supported for a given class of operating system (e.g. Unix, Win32).
- </p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="virtuals">No Virtual Methods</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>The System Library interfaces can be called quite frequently by LLVM. In
- order to make those calls as efficient as possible, we discourage the use of
- virtual methods. There is no need to use inheritance for implementation
- differences, it just adds complexity. The <tt>#include</tt> mechanism works
- just fine.</p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="nofunc">No Exposed Functions</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>Any functions defined by system libraries (i.e. not defined by lib/System)
- must not be exposed through the lib/System interface, even if the header file
- for that function is not exposed. This prevents inadvertent use of system
- specific functionality.</p>
- <p>For example, the <tt>stat</tt> system call is notorious for having
- variations in the data it provides. <tt>lib/System</tt> must not declare
- <tt>stat</tt> nor allow it to be declared. Instead it should provide its own
- interface to discovering information about files and directories. Those
- interfaces may be implemented in terms of <tt>stat</tt> but that is strictly
- an implementation detail. The interface provided by the System Library must
- be implemented on all platforms (even those without <tt>stat</tt>).</p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="nodata">No Exposed Data</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>Any data defined by system libraries (i.e. not defined by lib/System) must
- not be exposed through the lib/System interface, even if the header file for
- that function is not exposed. As with functions, this prevents inadvertent use
- of data that might not exist on all platforms.</p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="softerrors">Minimize Soft Errors</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>Operating system interfaces will generally provide error results for every
- little thing that could go wrong. In almost all cases, you can divide these
- error results into two groups: normal/good/soft and abnormal/bad/hard. That
- is, some of the errors are simply information like "file not found",
- "insufficient privileges", etc. while other errors are much harder like
- "out of space", "bad disk sector", or "system call interrupted". We'll call
- the first group "<i>soft</i>" errors and the second group "<i>hard</i>"
- errors.<p>
- <p>lib/System must always attempt to minimize soft errors.
- This is a design requirement because the
- minimization of soft errors can affect the granularity and the nature of the
- interface. In general, if you find that you're wanting to throw soft errors,
- you must review the granularity of the interface because it is likely you're
- trying to implement something that is too low level. The rule of thumb is to
- provide interface functions that <em>can't</em> fail, except when faced with
- hard errors.</p>
- <p>For a trivial example, suppose we wanted to add an "OpenFileForWriting"
- function. For many operating systems, if the file doesn't exist, attempting
- to open the file will produce an error. However, lib/System should not
- simply throw that error if it occurs because its a soft error. The problem
- is that the interface function, OpenFileForWriting is too low level. It should
- be OpenOrCreateFileForWriting. In the case of the soft "doesn't exist" error,
- this function would just create it and then open it for writing.</p>
- <p>This design principle needs to be maintained in lib/System because it
- avoids the propagation of soft error handling throughout the rest of LLVM.
- Hard errors will generally just cause a termination for an LLVM tool so don't
- be bashful about throwing them.</p>
- <p>Rules of thumb:</p>
- <ol>
- <li>Don't throw soft errors, only hard errors.</li>
- <li>If you're tempted to throw a soft error, re-think the interface.</li>
- <li>Handle internally the most common normal/good/soft error conditions
- so the rest of LLVM doesn't have to.</li>
- </ol>
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="throw_spec">No throw Specifications</a>
-</div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>None of the lib/System interface functions may be declared with C++
- <tt>throw()</tt> specifications on them. This requirement makes sure that the
- compiler does not insert additional exception handling code into the interface
- functions. This is a performance consideration: lib/System functions are at
- the bottom of many call chains and as such can be frequently called. We
- need them to be as efficient as possible. However, no routines in the
- system library should actually throw exceptions.</p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="organization">Code Organization</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>Implementations of the System Library interface are separated by their
- general class of operating system. Currently only Unix and Win32 classes are
- defined but more could be added for other operating system classifications.
- To distinguish which implementation to compile, the code in lib/System uses
- the LLVM_ON_UNIX and LLVM_ON_WIN32 #defines provided via configure through the
- llvm/Config/config.h file. Each source file in lib/System, after implementing
- the generic (operating system independent) functionality needs to include the
- correct implementation using a set of <tt>#if defined(LLVM_ON_XYZ)</tt>
- directives. For example, if we had lib/System/File.cpp, we'd expect to see in
- that file:</p>
- <pre><tt>
- #if defined(LLVM_ON_UNIX)
- #include "Unix/File.cpp"
- #endif
- #if defined(LLVM_ON_WIN32)
- #include "Win32/File.cpp"
- #endif
- </tt></pre>
- <p>The implementation in lib/System/Unix/File.cpp should handle all Unix
- variants. The implementation in lib/System/Win32/File.cpp should handle all
- Win32 variants. What this does is quickly differentiate the basic class of
- operating system that will provide the implementation. The specific details
- for a given platform must still be determined through the use of
- <tt>#ifdef</tt>.</p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="semantics">Consistent Semantics</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>The implementation of a lib/System interface can vary drastically between
- platforms. That's okay as long as the end result of the interface function
- is the same. For example, a function to create a directory is pretty straight
- forward on all operating system. System V IPC on the other hand isn't even
- supported on all platforms. Instead of "supporting" System V IPC, lib/System
- should provide an interface to the basic concept of inter-process
- communications. The implementations might use System V IPC if that was
- available or named pipes, or whatever gets the job done effectively for a
- given operating system. In all cases, the interface and the implementation
- must be semantically consistent. </p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- ======================================================================= -->
-<div class="doc_subsection"><a name="bug">Bug 351</a></div>
-<div class="doc_text">
- <p>See <a href="http://llvm.org/PR351">bug 351</a>
- for further details on the progress of this work</p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
-
-<hr>
-<address>
- <a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer"><img
- src="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/images/vcss-blue" alt="Valid CSS"></a>
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-
- <a href="mailto:rspencer@x10sys.com">Reid Spencer</a><br>
- <a href="http://llvm.org">LLVM Compiler Infrastructure</a><br>
- Last modified: $Date$
-</address>
-</body>
-</html>