Building LLVM with CMake
CMake is a cross-platform build-generator tool. CMake
does not build the project, it generates the files needed by your build tool
(GNU make, Visual Studio, etc) for building LLVM.
If you are really anxious about getting a functional LLVM build, go to the
Quick start section. If you are a CMake novice, start on Basic CMake usage
and then go back to the Quick start once you know what you are doing. The
Options and variables section is a reference for customizing your build. If
you already have experience with CMake, this is the recommended starting point.
We use here the command-line, non-interactive CMake interface.
Download and install
CMake. Version 2.8 is the minimum required.
Open a shell. Your development tools must be reachable from this shell
through the PATH environment variable.
Create a directory for containing the build. It is not supported to build
LLVM on the source directory. cd to this directory:
$ mkdir mybuilddir
$ cd mybuilddir
Execute this command on the shell replacing path/to/llvm/source/root with
the path to the root of your LLVM source tree:
$ cmake path/to/llvm/source/root
CMake will detect your development environment, perform a series of test and
generate the files required for building LLVM. CMake will use default values
for all build parameters. See the Options and variables section for
fine-tuning your build
This can fail if CMake can’t detect your toolset, or if it thinks that the
environment is not sane enough. On this case make sure that the toolset that
you intend to use is the only one reachable from the shell and that the shell
itself is the correct one for you development environment. CMake will refuse
to build MinGW makefiles if you have a POSIX shell reachable through the PATH
environment variable, for instance. You can force CMake to use a given build
tool, see the Usage section.
This section explains basic aspects of CMake, mostly for explaining those
options which you may need on your day-to-day usage.
CMake comes with extensive documentation in the form of html files and on the
cmake executable itself. Execute cmake --help for further help options.
CMake requires to know for which build tool it shall generate files (GNU make,
Visual Studio, Xcode, etc). If not specified on the command line, it tries to
guess it based on you environment. Once identified the build tool, CMake uses
the corresponding Generator for creating files for your build tool. You can
explicitly specify the generator with the command line option -G "Name of the
generator". For knowing the available generators on your platform, execute
This will list the generator’s names at the end of the help text. Generator’s
names are case-sensitive. Example:
$ cmake -G "Visual Studio 11" path/to/llvm/source/root
For a given development platform there can be more than one adequate
generator. If you use Visual Studio “NMake Makefiles” is a generator you can use
for building with NMake. By default, CMake chooses the more specific generator
supported by your development environment. If you want an alternative generator,
you must tell this to CMake with the -G option.
Variables customize how the build will be generated. Options are boolean
variables, with possible values ON/OFF. Options and variables are defined on the
CMake command line like this:
$ cmake -DVARIABLE=value path/to/llvm/source
You can set a variable after the initial CMake invocation for changing its
value. You can also undefine a variable:
$ cmake -UVARIABLE path/to/llvm/source
Variables are stored on the CMake cache. This is a file named CMakeCache.txt
on the root of the build directory. Do not hand-edit it.
Variables are listed here appending its type after a colon. It is correct to
write the variable and the type on the CMake command line:
$ cmake -DVARIABLE:TYPE=value path/to/llvm/source
Here are some of the CMake variables that are used often, along with a
brief explanation and LLVM-specific notes. For full documentation, check the
CMake docs or execute cmake --help-variable VARIABLE_NAME.
- CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING
- Sets the build type for make based generators. Possible values are
Release, Debug, RelWithDebInfo and MinSizeRel. On systems like Visual Studio
the user sets the build type with the IDE settings.
- CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH
- Path where LLVM will be installed if “make install” is invoked or the
“INSTALL” target is built.
- LLVM_LIBDIR_SUFFIX:STRING
- Extra suffix to append to the directory where libraries are to be
installed. On a 64-bit architecture, one could use -DLLVM_LIBDIR_SUFFIX=64
to install libraries to /usr/lib64.
- CMAKE_C_FLAGS:STRING
- Extra flags to use when compiling C source files.
- CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS:STRING
- Extra flags to use when compiling C++ source files.
- BUILD_SHARED_LIBS:BOOL
- Flag indicating if shared libraries will be built. Its default value is
OFF. Shared libraries are not supported on Windows and not recommended on the
other OSes.
- LLVM_TARGETS_TO_BUILD:STRING
- Semicolon-separated list of targets to build, or all for building all
targets. Case-sensitive. Defaults to all. Example:
-DLLVM_TARGETS_TO_BUILD="X86;PowerPC".
- LLVM_BUILD_TOOLS:BOOL
- Build LLVM tools. Defaults to ON. Targets for building each tool are generated
in any case. You can build an tool separately by invoking its target. For
example, you can build llvm-as with a makefile-based system executing make
llvm-as on the root of your build directory.
- LLVM_INCLUDE_TOOLS:BOOL
- Generate build targets for the LLVM tools. Defaults to ON. You can use that
option for disabling the generation of build targets for the LLVM tools.
- LLVM_BUILD_EXAMPLES:BOOL
- Build LLVM examples. Defaults to OFF. Targets for building each example are
generated in any case. See documentation for LLVM_BUILD_TOOLS above for more
details.
- LLVM_INCLUDE_EXAMPLES:BOOL
- Generate build targets for the LLVM examples. Defaults to ON. You can use that
option for disabling the generation of build targets for the LLVM examples.
- LLVM_BUILD_TESTS:BOOL
- Build LLVM unit tests. Defaults to OFF. Targets for building each unit test
are generated in any case. You can build a specific unit test with the target
UnitTestNameTests (where at this time UnitTestName can be ADT, Analysis,
ExecutionEngine, JIT, Support, Transform, VMCore; see the subdirectories of
unittests for an updated list.) It is possible to build all unit tests with
the target UnitTests.
- LLVM_INCLUDE_TESTS:BOOL
- Generate build targets for the LLVM unit tests. Defaults to ON. You can use
that option for disabling the generation of build targets for the LLVM unit
tests.
- LLVM_APPEND_VC_REV:BOOL
- Append version control revision info (svn revision number or Git revision id)
to LLVM version string (stored in the PACKAGE_VERSION macro). For this to work
cmake must be invoked before the build. Defaults to OFF.
- LLVM_ENABLE_THREADS:BOOL
- Build with threads support, if available. Defaults to ON.
- LLVM_ENABLE_CXX1Y:BOOL
- Build in C++1y mode, if available. Defaults to OFF.
- LLVM_ENABLE_ASSERTIONS:BOOL
- Enables code assertions. Defaults to OFF if and only if CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE
is Release.
- LLVM_ENABLE_PIC:BOOL
- Add the -fPIC flag for the compiler command-line, if the compiler supports
this flag. Some systems, like Windows, do not need this flag. Defaults to ON.
- LLVM_ENABLE_WARNINGS:BOOL
- Enable all compiler warnings. Defaults to ON.
- LLVM_ENABLE_PEDANTIC:BOOL
- Enable pedantic mode. This disable compiler specific extensions, is
possible. Defaults to ON.
- LLVM_ENABLE_WERROR:BOOL
- Stop and fail build, if a compiler warning is triggered. Defaults to OFF.
- LLVM_BUILD_32_BITS:BOOL
- Build 32-bits executables and libraries on 64-bits systems. This option is
available only on some 64-bits unix systems. Defaults to OFF.
- LLVM_TARGET_ARCH:STRING
- LLVM target to use for native code generation. This is required for JIT
generation. It defaults to “host”, meaning that it shall pick the architecture
of the machine where LLVM is being built. If you are cross-compiling, set it
to the target architecture name.
- LLVM_TABLEGEN:STRING
- Full path to a native TableGen executable (usually named tblgen). This is
intended for cross-compiling: if the user sets this variable, no native
TableGen will be created.
- LLVM_LIT_ARGS:STRING
- Arguments given to lit. make check and make clang-test are affected.
By default, '-sv --no-progress-bar' on Visual C++ and Xcode, '-sv' on
others.
- LLVM_LIT_TOOLS_DIR:PATH
- The path to GnuWin32 tools for tests. Valid on Windows host. Defaults to “”,
then Lit seeks tools according to %PATH%. Lit can find tools(eg. grep, sort,
&c) on LLVM_LIT_TOOLS_DIR at first, without specifying GnuWin32 to %PATH%.
- LLVM_ENABLE_FFI:BOOL
- Indicates whether LLVM Interpreter will be linked with Foreign Function
Interface library. If the library or its headers are installed on a custom
location, you can set the variables FFI_INCLUDE_DIR and
FFI_LIBRARY_DIR. Defaults to OFF.
- LLVM_EXTERNAL_{CLANG,LLD,POLLY}_SOURCE_DIR:PATH
- Path to {Clang,lld,Polly}‘s source directory. Defaults to
tools/{clang,lld,polly}. {Clang,lld,Polly} will not be built when it
is empty or it does not point to a valid path.
- LLVM_USE_OPROFILE:BOOL
- Enable building OProfile JIT support. Defaults to OFF
- LLVM_USE_INTEL_JITEVENTS:BOOL
- Enable building support for Intel JIT Events API. Defaults to OFF
- LLVM_ENABLE_ZLIB:BOOL
- Build with zlib to support compression/uncompression in LLVM tools.
Defaults to ON.
- LLVM_USE_SANITIZER:STRING
- Define the sanitizer used to build LLVM binaries and tests. Possible values
are Address, Memory and MemoryWithOrigins. Defaults to empty
string.
- LLVM_BUILD_DOCS:BOOL
- Enables all enabled documentation targets (i.e. Doxgyen and Sphinx targets) to
be built as part of the normal build. If the install target is run then
this also enables all built documentation targets to be installed. Defaults to
OFF.
- LLVM_ENABLE_DOXYGEN:BOOL
- Enables the generation of browsable HTML documentation using doxygen.
Defaults to OFF.
- LLVM_ENABLE_DOXYGEN_QT_HELP:BOOL
- Enables the generation of a Qt Compressed Help file. Defaults to OFF.
This affects the make target doxygen-llvm. When enabled, apart from
the normal HTML output generated by doxygen, this will produce a QCH file
named org.llvm.qch. You can then load this file into Qt Creator.
This option is only useful in combination with -DLLVM_ENABLE_DOXYGEN=ON;
otherwise this has no effect.
- LLVM_DOXYGEN_QCH_FILENAME:STRING
- The filename of the Qt Compressed Help file that will be genrated when
-DLLVM_ENABLE_DOXYGEN=ON and
-DLLVM_ENABLE_DOXYGEN_QT_HELP=ON are given. Defaults to
org.llvm.qch.
This option is only useful in combination with
-DLLVM_ENABLE_DOXYGEN_QT_HELP=ON;
otherwise this has no effect.
- LLVM_DOXYGEN_QHP_NAMESPACE:STRING
- Namespace under which the intermediate Qt Help Project file lives. See Qt
Help Project
for more information. Defaults to “org.llvm”. This option is only useful in
combination with -DLLVM_ENABLE_DOXYGEN_QT_HELP=ON; otherwise
this has no effect.
- LLVM_DOXYGEN_QHP_CUST_FILTER_NAME:STRING
- See Qt Help Project for
more information. Defaults to the CMake variable ${PACKAGE_STRING} which
is a combination of the package name and version string. This filter can then
be used in Qt Creator to select only documentation from LLVM when browsing
through all the help files that you might have loaded. This option is only
useful in combination with -DLLVM_ENABLE_DOXYGEN_QT_HELP=ON;
otherwise this has no effect.
- LLVM_DOXYGEN_QHELPGENERATOR_PATH:STRING
- The path to the qhelpgenerator executable. Defaults to whatever CMake’s
find_program() can find. This option is only useful in combination with
-DLLVM_ENABLE_DOXYGEN_QT_HELP=ON; otherwise this has no
effect.
- LLVM_ENABLE_SPHINX:BOOL
- If enabled CMake will search for the sphinx-build executable and will make
the SPHINX_OUTPUT_HTML and SPHINX_OUTPUT_MAN CMake options available.
Defaults to OFF.
- SPHINX_EXECUTABLE:STRING
- The path to the sphinx-build executable detected by CMake.
- SPHINX_OUTPUT_HTML:BOOL
- If enabled (and LLVM_ENABLE_SPHINX is enabled) then the targets for
building the documentation as html are added (but not built by default unless
LLVM_BUILD_DOCS is enabled). There is a target for each project in the
source tree that uses sphinx (e.g. docs-llvm-html, docs-clang-html
and docs-lld-html). Defaults to ON.
- SPHINX_OUTPUT_MAN:BOOL
- If enabled (and LLVM_ENABLE_SPHINX is enabled) the targets for building
the man pages are added (but not built by default unless LLVM_BUILD_DOCS
is enabled). Currently the only target added is docs-llvm-man. Defaults
to ON.
Testing is performed when the check target is built. For instance, if you are
using makefiles, execute this command while on the top level of your build
directory:
On Visual Studio, you may run tests to build the project “check”.
See this wiki page for
generic instructions on how to cross-compile with CMake. It goes into detailed
explanations and may seem daunting, but it is not. On the wiki page there are
several examples including toolchain files. Go directly to this section
for a quick solution.
Also see the LLVM-specific variables section for variables used when
cross-compiling.
The most difficult part of adding LLVM to the build of a project is to determine
the set of LLVM libraries corresponding to the set of required LLVM
features. What follows is an example of how to obtain this information:
# A convenience variable:
set(LLVM_ROOT "" CACHE PATH "Root of LLVM install.")
# A bit of a sanity check:
if( NOT EXISTS ${LLVM_ROOT}/include/llvm )
message(FATAL_ERROR "LLVM_ROOT (${LLVM_ROOT}) is not a valid LLVM install")
endif()
# We incorporate the CMake features provided by LLVM:
set(CMAKE_MODULE_PATH ${CMAKE_MODULE_PATH} "${LLVM_ROOT}/share/llvm/cmake")
include(LLVMConfig)
# Now set the header and library paths:
include_directories( ${LLVM_INCLUDE_DIRS} )
link_directories( ${LLVM_LIBRARY_DIRS} )
add_definitions( ${LLVM_DEFINITIONS} )
# Let's suppose we want to build a JIT compiler with support for
# binary code (no interpreter):
llvm_map_components_to_libraries(REQ_LLVM_LIBRARIES jit native)
# Finally, we link the LLVM libraries to our executable:
target_link_libraries(mycompiler ${REQ_LLVM_LIBRARIES})
This assumes that LLVM_ROOT points to an install of LLVM. The procedure works
too for uninstalled builds although we need to take care to add an
include_directories for the location of the headers on the LLVM source
directory (if we are building out-of-source.)
Alternativaly, you can utilize CMake’s find_package functionality. Here is
an equivalent variant of snippet shown above:
find_package(LLVM)
if( NOT LLVM_FOUND )
message(FATAL_ERROR "LLVM package can't be found. Set CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH variable to LLVM's installation prefix.")
endif()
include_directories( ${LLVM_INCLUDE_DIRS} )
link_directories( ${LLVM_LIBRARY_DIRS} )
llvm_map_components_to_libraries(REQ_LLVM_LIBRARIES jit native)
target_link_libraries(mycompiler ${REQ_LLVM_LIBRARIES})
It is possible to develop LLVM passes against installed LLVM. An example of
project layout provided below:
<project dir>/
|
CMakeLists.txt
<pass name>/
|
CMakeLists.txt
Pass.cpp
...
Contents of <project dir>/CMakeLists.txt:
find_package(LLVM)
# Define add_llvm_* macro's.
include(AddLLVM)
add_definitions(${LLVM_DEFINITIONS})
include_directories(${LLVM_INCLUDE_DIRS})
link_directories(${LLVM_LIBRARY_DIRS})
add_subdirectory(<pass name>)
Contents of <project dir>/<pass name>/CMakeLists.txt:
add_llvm_loadable_module(LLVMPassname
Pass.cpp
)
When you are done developing your pass, you may wish to integrate it
into LLVM source tree. You can achieve it in two easy steps:
- Copying <pass name> folder into <LLVM root>/lib/Transform directory.
- Adding add_subdirectory(<pass name>) line into
<LLVM root>/lib/Transform/CMakeLists.txt.