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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
                      "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="llvm.css" type="text/css">
  <title>LLVM 2.5 Release Notes</title>
</head>
<body>

<div class="doc_title">LLVM 2.5 Release Notes</div>

<ol>
  <li><a href="#intro">Introduction</a></li>
  <li><a href="#subproj">Sub-project Status Update</a></li>
  <li><a href="#externalproj">External Projects Using LLVM 2.5</a></li>
  <li><a href="#whatsnew">What's New in LLVM 2.5?</a></li>
  <li><a href="GettingStarted.html">Installation Instructions</a></li>
  <li><a href="#portability">Portability and Supported Platforms</a></li>
  <li><a href="#knownproblems">Known Problems</a></li>
  <li><a href="#additionalinfo">Additional Information</a></li>
</ol>

<div class="doc_author">
  <p>Written by the <a href="http://llvm.org">LLVM Team</a></p>
</div>

<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
  <a name="intro">Introduction</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->

<div class="doc_text">

<p>This document contains the release notes for the LLVM Compiler
Infrastructure, release 2.5.  Here we describe the status of LLVM, including
major improvements from the previous release and significant known problems.
All LLVM releases may be downloaded from the <a
href="http://llvm.org/releases/">LLVM releases web site</a>.</p>

<p>For more information about LLVM, including information about the latest
release, please check out the <a href="http://llvm.org/">main LLVM
web site</a>.  If you have questions or comments, the <a
href="http://mail.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">LLVM Developer's Mailing
List</a> is a good place to send them.</p>

<p>Note that if you are reading this file from a Subversion checkout or the
main LLVM web page, this document applies to the <i>next</i> release, not the
current one.  To see the release notes for a specific release, please see the
<a href="http://llvm.org/releases/">releases page</a>.</p>

</div>

<!-- Unfinished features in 2.5:
  Machine LICM
  Machine Sinking
  target-specific intrinsics
  gold lto plugin
  pre-alloc splitter, strong phi elim
  <tt>llc -enable-value-prop</tt>, propagation of value info
       (sign/zero ext info) from one MBB to another
  debug info for optimized code
  interpreter + libffi
  postalloc scheduler: anti dependence breaking, hazard recognizer?

initial support for debug line numbers when optimization enabled, not useful in
  2.5 but will be for 2.6.

 -->

 <!-- for announcement email:
   -->

<!-- *********************************************************************** -->
<div class="doc_section">
  <a name="subproj">Sub-project Status Update</a>
</div>
<!-- *********************************************************************** -->

<div class="doc_text">
<p>
The LLVM 2.5 distribution currently consists of code from the core LLVM
repository &mdash;which roughly includes the LLVM optimizers, code generators
and supporting tools &mdash; and the llvm-gcc repository.  In addition to this
code, the LLVM Project includes other sub-projects that are in development.  The
two which are the most actively developed are the <a href="#clang">Clang
Project</a> and the <a href="#vmkit">VMKit Project</a>.
</p>

</div>


<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="clang">Clang: C/C++/Objective-C Frontend Toolkit</a>
</div>

<div class="doc_text">

<p>The <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/">Clang project</a> is an effort to build
a set of new 'LLVM native' front-end technologies for the LLVM optimizer and
code generator.  While Clang is not included in the LLVM 2.5 release, it is
continuing to make major strides forward in all areas.  Its C and Objective-C
parsing and code generation support is now very solid.  For example, it is
capable of successfully building many real-world applications for X86-32
andX86-64,
including <a href="http://wiki.freebsd.org/BuildingFreeBSDWithClang">the FreeBSD
kernel</a>.  C++ is also
making <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/cxx_status.html">incredible progress</a>,
and work on templates has recently started.</p>

<p>While Clang is not yet production quality, it is progressing very nicely and
is quite usable for building many C and Objective-C applications.  If you are
interested in fast compiles and good diagnostics, we encourage you to try it out
by <a href="http://clang.llvm.org/get_started.html">building from mainline</a>
and reporting any issues you hit to the <a
href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev">Clang front-end mailing
list</a>.</p>

<p>In the LLVM 2.5 time-frame, the Clang team has made many improvements:</p>

<ul>
<li>Clang now has a new driver, which is focused on providing a GCC-compatible
    interface.</li>
<li>The X86-64 ABI is now supported.</li>
<li>Precompiled header support is now implemented.</li>
<li>Objective-C support is significantly improved beyond LLVM 2.4, supporting
    many features, such as Objective-C Garbage Collection.</li>
<li>Many many bugs are fixed and many features have been added.</li>
</ul>
</div>

<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="clangsa">Clang Static Analyzer</a>
</div>

<div class="doc_text">

<p>Previously announced in the last LLVM release, the Clang project also
includes an early stage static source code analysis tool for <a
href="http://clang.llvm.org/StaticAnalysis.html">automatically finding bugs</a>
in C and Objective-C programs. The tool performs a growing set of checks to find
bugs that occur on a specific path within a program.</p>

<p>In the LLVM 2.5 time-frame there have been many significant improvements to
the analyzer's core path simulation engine and machinery for generating
path-based bug reports to end-users. Particularly noteworthy improvements
include experimental support for full field-sensitivity and reasoning about heap
objects as well as an improved value-constraints subengine that does a much
better job of reasoning about inequality relationships (e.g., <tt>x &gt; 2</tt>)
between variables and constants.

<p>The set of checks performed by the static analyzer continues to expand, and
future plans for the tool include full source-level inter-procedural analysis
and deeper checks such as buffer overrun detection. There are many opportunities
to extend and enhance the static analyzer, and anyone interested in working on
this project is encouraged to get involved!</p>

</div>

<!--=========================================================================-->
<div class="doc_subsection">
<a name="vmkit">VMKit: JVM/CLI Virtual Machine Implementation</a>
</div>

<div class="doc_text">
<p>
The <a href="http://vmkit.llvm.org/">VMKit project</a> is an implementation of
a JVM and a CLI Virtual Machines (Microsoft .NET is an
implementation of the CLI) using the Just-In-Time compiler of LLVM.</p>

<p>Following LLVM 2.5, VMKit has its second release that you can find on its
<a href="http://vmkit.llvm.org/releases/">webpage</a>. The release includes
bug fixes, cleanup and new features. The major changes are:</p>

<ul>

<li>Ahead of Time compiler: compiles .class files to llvm .bc. VMKit uses this
functionality to native compile the standard classes (e.g. java.lang.String).
Users can compile AoT .class files into dynamic libraries and run them with the
help of VMKit.</li>

<li>New exception model: the dwarf exception model is very slow for
exception-intensive applications, so the JVM has had a new implementation of
exceptions which check at each function call if an exception happene