I have read online documentations and built LLVM using Cmake and visual studio using Getting Started with the LLVM System using Microsoft Visual Studio. I could not find how to use the LLVM tooolchain on an existing visual studio project. I am new to this environment and would appreciate any help.
EDIT 1 : I am contributing to a project, where I am required to build an Interpreter. The project restricts me to code in VS.
Here are the errors when I try to integrate LLVM and VS, I must be doing something terribly wrong LLVM compilation errors on VS 2012
EDIT 2: I am unclear as to how should we integrate LLVM in an existing VS project after a successful LLVM build (and installation on system).
EDIT 3: I aim to develop my own language utilizing clang/llvm. I cant figure out how to do this sitting in the VS enironment.
The instructions you have followed are not supposed to produce a "plug-in replacement for Visual Studio's provided compiler", but a way to, generally, build LLVM+CLANG - and of course, unless you are wanting to spend a lot of work [1], to build a compiler written in C++, you need an existing C++ compiler - and the instructions show how to do that with Visual Studio. You then have a clang and clang++ compiler and tools on your system, but it's not meant for "use it within Visual Studio".
From what I can tell from past experience, the Visual Studio compiler is not trivially replaceable, but you can of course use a Makefile Project to compile anything in any way you like.
This discussion from MS does provide another solution, but again, it's not a "instant plug in" solution:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/vstudio/en-US/b9610ed2-e8ae-48c9-864c-e3d12af97b05/support-an-alternative-compiler
Some further googling shows this up:
https://github.com/ishani/ClangVSx
I have no idea if that works well or not - it seems to "only" support clang 3.3, where the current release is 3.4 and the "latest" is pre-3.5. I doubt there's a huge amount of difference, but I'm also not sure that there's "no difference".
[1] You can "bootstrap" a compiler from nothing, but it's really quite a lot of work writing a small compiler that can do a subset of the language, repeat this several times, to eventually compile the actual compiler in a more full compiler - and LLVM is not even nearly designed for that in the first place.
Related
I am creating a very large project (a few thousand lines) and so would rather not use Notepad++. An IDE would make it so much easier. I have experience with Microsoft Visual Studio and love it. Is there some easy way to use Cygwin's GCC from within Microsoft Visual Studio?
Alternately, are there any other good Windows IDEs for GCC besides NetBeans and Eclipse? (I hate both of them with a passion.)
There are several ways to go here:
Option 1: Create a Custom Build Tool
Visual Studio 2005 and newer will let you register custom build tools. They tell the IDE how to transform files of one form (e.g. a .cpp file) into another form (e.g. an .obj file).
So far as I know, no one has done this yet for GCC. And, doing it yourself requires writing COM code, which is probably too deep a pool to dive into just for a single project. You'd have to have a compelling reason to take this project on.
You then have to manually adjust each project to tell it to use the custom build tool instead of the default, since you're using a file name extension (.cpp, probably) that Visual C++ already knows about. You'll run into trouble if you try to mix the VC++ and g++ compilers for a single executable built from multiple modules.
On the plus side, if you were looking to start an open source project, this sounds like a good one to me. I expect you'd quickly gather a big user base.
Option 2: Makefile Project
Start Visual Studio and say File > New Project.
In the Visual C++ section, select Makefile Project
Fill out the Makefile Project Wizard:
Build command line: make
Clean commands: make clean
Rebuild command line: make clean all
You can leave the Output (for debugging) field alone if you've named your executable after the project name and it lands where Visual Studio expects to find it.
Leave the rest of the fields alone unless you know what they are and why you want to change them. As an example, you might choose to pass a -D flag on the Preprocessor definitions line to get separate debug and release outputs. If you know you want this, you know how to set it up, so I'm not going to make this long answer even longer in order to explain it.
You'll be asked the same set of questions for the Release build. If you want to bother with separate debug and release builds, you'd make any changes here.
Having done all this, you still have to create the Makefile, and add a make.exe to your PATH. As with the debug vs. release question, going into that level of detail would push this answer off topic.
As ugly as this looks, it's still easier than creating custom build tools. Plus, you say you need to port to Unix eventually, so you're going to need that Makefile anyway.
Option 3: Cross-Platform Development
You say you want to port this program to Unix at some point, but that doesn't mean you must use GCC on Windows now. It is quite possible to write your program so that it builds under Visual C++ on Windows and GCC/Makefiles on *ix systems.
There are several tools that make this easier. One very popular option is CMake, which is available as an installation time option in newer versions of Visual Studio. There are many alternatives such as SCons and Bakefile.
Clang
You can use the Clang compiler with Visual Studio to target Android, iOS, and Windows.
If you are targeting Android, you can use the Clang/LLVM compiler that ships with the Android NDK and toolchain to build your project. Likewise, Visual Studio can use Clang running on a Mac to build projects targeting iOS. Support for Android and iOS is included in the “Mobile Development with C++” workload. For more information about targeting Android or iOS check out our posts tagged with the keywords “Android” and “iOS”.
If you are targeting Windows, you have a few options:
Use Clang/LLVM; “Clang for Windows” includes instructions to install Clang/LLVM as a platform toolset in Visual Studio.
Use Clang to target Windows with Clang/C2 (Clang frontend with Microsoft Code Generation).
GCC
If your project targets Linux or Android, you can consider using GCC. Visual Studio’s C++ Android development natively supports building your projects with the GCC that ships with the Android NDK, just like it does for Clang. You can also target Linux – either remotely or locally with the Windows Subsystem for Linux – with GCC.
Check out our post on Visual C++ for Linux Development for much more info about how to use Visual Studio to target Linux with GCC. If you are specifically interested in targeting WSL locally, check out Targeting WSL from Visual Studio.
Source: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/use-any-c-compiler-with-visual-studio/
I'm from the future.
I keep (poking at) a C/C++ toolchain using Visual Code on Win/Lin/Mac and MinGW installed from Choclatey.
(This was done for my sanity - install GDB and GCC however you want)
I've run it with GCC and GDB with IntelliSense using MS's own weird JSON makefiles.
Someday, someone (you?) will write a Gradle or Python script to generate these; for now the examples online in the docs seem to work.
It seems to require three types of JSON thing;
a single IntelliSense configuration for the whole workspace
a Debugging Configuration entry for each binary you want to debug
these can invoke the build tasks
a Build Task per-artifact
I don't think that there's a "require" or "dependency" thingie-mah-bob; sorry
I am creating a very large project (a few thousand lines) and so would rather not use Notepad++. An IDE would make it so much easier. I have experience with Microsoft Visual Studio and love it. Is there some easy way to use Cygwin's GCC from within Microsoft Visual Studio?
Alternately, are there any other good Windows IDEs for GCC besides NetBeans and Eclipse? (I hate both of them with a passion.)
There are several ways to go here:
Option 1: Create a Custom Build Tool
Visual Studio 2005 and newer will let you register custom build tools. They tell the IDE how to transform files of one form (e.g. a .cpp file) into another form (e.g. an .obj file).
So far as I know, no one has done this yet for GCC. And, doing it yourself requires writing COM code, which is probably too deep a pool to dive into just for a single project. You'd have to have a compelling reason to take this project on.
You then have to manually adjust each project to tell it to use the custom build tool instead of the default, since you're using a file name extension (.cpp, probably) that Visual C++ already knows about. You'll run into trouble if you try to mix the VC++ and g++ compilers for a single executable built from multiple modules.
On the plus side, if you were looking to start an open source project, this sounds like a good one to me. I expect you'd quickly gather a big user base.
Option 2: Makefile Project
Start Visual Studio and say File > New Project.
In the Visual C++ section, select Makefile Project
Fill out the Makefile Project Wizard:
Build command line: make
Clean commands: make clean
Rebuild command line: make clean all
You can leave the Output (for debugging) field alone if you've named your executable after the project name and it lands where Visual Studio expects to find it.
Leave the rest of the fields alone unless you know what they are and why you want to change them. As an example, you might choose to pass a -D flag on the Preprocessor definitions line to get separate debug and release outputs. If you know you want this, you know how to set it up, so I'm not going to make this long answer even longer in order to explain it.
You'll be asked the same set of questions for the Release build. If you want to bother with separate debug and release builds, you'd make any changes here.
Having done all this, you still have to create the Makefile, and add a make.exe to your PATH. As with the debug vs. release question, going into that level of detail would push this answer off topic.
As ugly as this looks, it's still easier than creating custom build tools. Plus, you say you need to port to Unix eventually, so you're going to need that Makefile anyway.
Option 3: Cross-Platform Development
You say you want to port this program to Unix at some point, but that doesn't mean you must use GCC on Windows now. It is quite possible to write your program so that it builds under Visual C++ on Windows and GCC/Makefiles on *ix systems.
There are several tools that make this easier. One very popular option is CMake, which is available as an installation time option in newer versions of Visual Studio. There are many alternatives such as SCons and Bakefile.
Clang
You can use the Clang compiler with Visual Studio to target Android, iOS, and Windows.
If you are targeting Android, you can use the Clang/LLVM compiler that ships with the Android NDK and toolchain to build your project. Likewise, Visual Studio can use Clang running on a Mac to build projects targeting iOS. Support for Android and iOS is included in the “Mobile Development with C++” workload. For more information about targeting Android or iOS check out our posts tagged with the keywords “Android” and “iOS”.
If you are targeting Windows, you have a few options:
Use Clang/LLVM; “Clang for Windows” includes instructions to install Clang/LLVM as a platform toolset in Visual Studio.
Use Clang to target Windows with Clang/C2 (Clang frontend with Microsoft Code Generation).
GCC
If your project targets Linux or Android, you can consider using GCC. Visual Studio’s C++ Android development natively supports building your projects with the GCC that ships with the Android NDK, just like it does for Clang. You can also target Linux – either remotely or locally with the Windows Subsystem for Linux – with GCC.
Check out our post on Visual C++ for Linux Development for much more info about how to use Visual Studio to target Linux with GCC. If you are specifically interested in targeting WSL locally, check out Targeting WSL from Visual Studio.
Source: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/use-any-c-compiler-with-visual-studio/
I'm from the future.
I keep (poking at) a C/C++ toolchain using Visual Code on Win/Lin/Mac and MinGW installed from Choclatey.
(This was done for my sanity - install GDB and GCC however you want)
I've run it with GCC and GDB with IntelliSense using MS's own weird JSON makefiles.
Someday, someone (you?) will write a Gradle or Python script to generate these; for now the examples online in the docs seem to work.
It seems to require three types of JSON thing;
a single IntelliSense configuration for the whole workspace
a Debugging Configuration entry for each binary you want to debug
these can invoke the build tasks
a Build Task per-artifact
I don't think that there's a "require" or "dependency" thingie-mah-bob; sorry
I googled a lot and didn't find an appropriate answer, so I'm asking here.
What steps do I need to take to develop a c++ project from existing code which shall be compiled using cmake and clang?
I also want to have all the nice features like auto-completion and debugging with breakpoints and step by step debugging.
See the recent LLVM snapshot page for Windows builds integrating with Visual Studio here. There is an installer and a code formatting plugin. You will not get auto-complete and Clang/LLVM has nothing to do with debugging in Visual Studio (except that it will probably not work if you compile with Clang).
See also this interesting blog post predicting much good for LLVM on Windows in the future, backed by companies with paid developers ;-)
Staying on top of what the clang guys are doing for Windows is a good idea. The last two releases 3.6 and 3.7 show a commitment to the product but still some holes: MSVC C++: /Z7 but not quite /Zi debug information, not quite compatible with MSVC C++ exceptions (but Windows SEH works) meaning this is more like an auxiliary build tool at the moment than something you can build any running product on. I concur with the problems with exceptions at the moment.
I haven't got the strakh to post more than two links but the intervening weekly notes, have lots of interesting snippets including the coming of lldb to Windows and (if you care for this sort of thing) a longer post on compiling for CLR on Windows. Either way, looking at blog.llvm.org regularly is a good idea to keep this answer current.
I started working just a few hours ago on a pseudocode translator, which will translate a specific pseudocode, reguarding work with stacks and queues, to c/c++ executable code. The translator has education propuses.
I am still designing the project.
I've started thinking about how this could be done; I figured that maybe the best way to do this is to, in the first place, analize the pseudocode, change it to make it c/c++ code and then compiling it to make it an exe.
NOW, this would mean that the client machine SHOULD HAVE a c/c++ compiler installed on it.
As I'm working with .NET clases ( System.Collections.Generic.Queue(Of T) and System.Collections.Generic.Stack(Of T) ), I thought that a solution to this would be to use the same compiler visual studio uses to compile c/c++ code.
I've been investigating about this proccess, and as far as I know, the only way to compile c/c++ code by using a visual studio tool, is executing cl.exe from the Visual Studio Command Prompt. I found that information here at MSDN (article about how to manually compiling a c/c++ program)
So my first question is: does the USER versión of .NET Framework (this means, assuming the user DOES NOT have Visual Studio) include a c/c++ compiler? If yes, is it the same included in visual studio, cl.exe? How can I get access to it? If no, is there a free compiler WITHOUT IDE I can include on my translator setup?
Notice that here we're talking about transforming a pseudocode string to executable c/c++ code here, the output string MUST BE COMPILED FROM THE USER PC, that's what the project is about.
There is no compiler included in the .Net framework - it is for running binary files produced by the compiler.
It's possible to get the compiler for free through for example the Visual Studio Express free download scheme. There are some license limitations on that ("no commercial use", if I remember correctly - so that would mean that if one of your customers uses your product, they can no sell the resulting code they have produced [and still be within the contract with MS]). Unfortunately, this isn't "without IDE", but the compiler that is part of the download is usable without the IDE, so if "without IDE" is simply that you want to be able to run the compiler with your program, then it will work.
If you really need a package that contains the compiler (in .Net variant) but no IDE code, then you will have to find a different solution - and for .Net I'm not sure there is one. The DDK (Device Driver Kit) contains the native C and C++ compilers. But it won't, as far as I understand, produce .Net code [I could be wrong].
Edit: It seems like if you are writing your own code, you can compile it using CSharpCodeProvider - however, this is not the same as a command-line compiler of cl.exe.
The long, the short, and the ugly is "no". The only C++ compiler remotely suitable for inclusion as a library is Clang, it's free and not toooooo bad to work with, and you'll have to write your own .NET binding, and don't forget to have fun with providing your own linker and stdlib.
While the Microsoft compiler typically builds faster code, I'm in an environment where building Linux applications with gcc is required. I prefer MSVS and the Express versions as my IDE and have been able to configure it such that Intellisense and all the other nice features are working. However, I have been unable to find an easy way to get VC++ Express 2010 to build using gcc. I'm not sure if I remember correctly, but I thought about half a decade ago there was support to switch compilers when using MSVS.
I have found an extension to download claiming to do this, but it costs about $50. Does anybody know of any free or open source tools that can accomplish the above?
Try CMake: http://www.cmake.org/. It is a cross-platform, cross-ide build system. It will generate
VS project for you, and ordinary makefiles (or eclipse, or what you need).
Then, use VS to edit the code, and "make" to build it. I did it myself to develop windows + linux on virtual machine. And it worked fine.
As I realize there are no plugins, but you could simply setup some custom build rules and make gcc compile your project instead of the cl.
Google for the Custom build rules in Visual Studio / provide your own makefile. Also note that if you wish to still have the ability to debug your applications, you should probably look for something like WinGDB.
The good thing in this approach is that you can switch your configurations from cl to gcc, for example and easily test if your application remains compilable in both of them.
Still, the best way would probably be to use some automatic building tools like cmake or scons, which simplify the process greatly and can help you to switch to any other IDE in a matter of minutes.
Personally I like scons, because it's python-driven, but cmake is very nice to start from.