2009-02-14 23:20:19 +03:00
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<title>Clang - Get Involved</title>
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<div id="content">
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<h1>Getting Involved with the Clang Project</h1>
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<p>Once you have <a href="get_started.html">checked out and built</a> clang and
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played around with it, you might be wondering what you can do to make it better
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and contribute to its development. Alternatively, maybe you just want to follow
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the development of the project to see it progress.
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</p>
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<h2>Follow what's going on</h2>
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<p>Clang is a subproject of the <a href="http://llvm.org">LLVM Project</a>, but
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has its own mailing lists because the communities have people with different
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interests. The two clang lists are:</p>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-commits">cfe-commits
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</a> - This list is for patch submission/discussion.</li>
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<li><a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev">cfe-dev</a> -
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This list is for everything else clang related (questions and answers, bug
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reports, etc).</li>
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</ul>
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<p>If you are interested in clang only, these two lists should be all
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you need. If you are interested in the LLVM optimizer and code generator,
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please consider signing up for <a
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href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">llvmdev</a> and <a
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href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvm-commits">llvm-commits</a>
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as well.</p>
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<p>The best way to talk with other developers on the project is through the <a
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href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev">cfe-dev mailing
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list</a>. The clang mailing list is a very friendly place and we welcome
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newcomers. In addition to the cfe-dev list, a significant amount of design
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discussion takes place on the <a
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href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-commits">cfe-commits mailing
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list</a>. All of these lists have archives, so you can browse through previous
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discussions or follow the list development on the web if you prefer.</p>
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<h2>Open Projects</h2>
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<p>Here are a few tasks that are available for newcomers to work on, depending
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on what your interests are. This list is provided to generate ideas, it is not
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intended to be comprehensive. Please ask on cfe-dev for more specifics or to
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verify that one of these isn't already completed. :)</p>
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<ul>
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<li><b>Compile your favorite C/ObjC project with "clang -fsyntax-only"</b>:
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the clang type checker and verifier is quite close to complete (but not bug
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free!) for C and Objective C. We appreciate all reports of code that is
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rejected by the front-end, and if you notice invalid code that is not rejected
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by clang, that is also very important to us. For make-based projects,
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the <a href="get_started.html#ccc"><code>ccc</code></a> script in clang's
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<tt>utils</tt> folder might help to get you started.</li>
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<li><b>Compile your favorite C project with "clang -emit-llvm"</b>:
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The clang to LLVM converter is getting more mature, so you may be able to
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compile it. If not, please let us know. Again,
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<a href="get_started.html#ccc"><code>ccc</code></a> might help you. Once it
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compiles it should run. If not, that's a bug :)</li>
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<li><b>Overflow detection</b>: an interesting project would be to add a -ftrapv
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compilation mode that causes -emit-llvm to generate overflow tests for all
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signed integer arithmetic operators, and call abort if they overflow. Overflow
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is undefined in C and hard for people to reason about. LLVM IR also has
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intrinsics for generating arithmetic with overflow checks directly.</li>
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<li><b>Undefined behavior checking</b>: similar to adding -ftrapv, codegen could
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insert runtime checks for all sorts of different undefined behaviors, from
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reading uninitialized variables, buffer overflows, and many other things. This
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checking would be expensive, but the optimizers could eliminate many of the
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checks in some cases, and it would be very interesting to test code in this mode
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for certain crowds of people. Because the inserted code is coming from clang,
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the "abort" message could be very detailed about exactly what went wrong.</li>
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<li><b>Continue work on C++ support</b>: Implementing all of C++ is a very big
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job, but there are lots of little pieces that can be picked off and implemented.
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See the <a href="cxx_status.html">C++ status report page</a> to find out what is
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missing and what is already at least partially supported.</li>
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<li><b>Improve target support</b>: The current target interfaces are heavily
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stubbed out and need to be implemented fully. See the FIXME's in TargetInfo.
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Additionally, the actual target implementations (instances of TargetInfoImpl)
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2009-02-25 08:39:01 +03:00
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also need to be completed.</li>
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2009-02-14 23:20:19 +03:00
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<li><b>Implement an tool to generate code documentation</b>: Clang's
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library-based design allows it to be used by a variety of tools that reason
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about source code. One great application of Clang would be to build an
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auto-documentation system like doxygen that generates code documentation from
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source code. The advantage of using Clang for such a tool is that the tool would
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use the same preprocessor/parser/ASTs as the compiler itself, giving it a very
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rich understanding of the code.</li>
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<li><b>Use clang libraries to implement better versions of existing tools</b>:
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Clang is built as a set of libraries, which means that it is possible to
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implement capabilities similar to other source language tools, improving them
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in various ways. Two examples are <a href="http://distcc.samba.org/">distcc</a>
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and the <a href="http://delta.tigris.org/">delta testcase reduction tool</a>.
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The former can be improved to scale better and be more efficient. The later
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could also be faster and more efficient at reducing C-family programs if built
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on the clang preprocessor.</li>
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<li><b>Use clang libraries to extend Ragel with a JIT</b>: <a
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href="http://research.cs.queensu.ca/~thurston/ragel/">Ragel</a> is a state
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machine compiler that lets you embed C code into state machines and generate
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C code. It would be relatively easy to turn this into a JIT compiler using
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LLVM.</li>
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<li><b>Self-testing using clang</b>: There are several neat ways to
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improve the quality of clang by self-testing. Some examples:
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<ul>
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<li>Improve the reliability of AST printing and serialization by
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ensuring that the AST produced by clang on an input doesn't change
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when it is reparsed or unserialized.
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<li>Improve parser reliability and error generation by automatically
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or randomly changing the input checking that clang doesn't crash and
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that it doesn't generate excessive errors for small input
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changes. Manipulating the input at both the text and token levels is
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likely to produce interesting test cases.
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</ul>
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</li>
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</ul>
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<p>If you hit a bug with clang, it is very useful for us if you reduce the code
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that demonstrates the problem down to something small. There are many ways to
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do this; ask on cfe-dev for advice.</p>
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</div>
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</body>
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</html>
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