Adding an optimization pipeline to your compiler

The tinylang compiler we developed in the previous chapters performs no optimizations on the IR code. In the next few subsections, we’ll add an optimization pipeline to the compiler to achieve this accordingly.

Creating an optimization pipeline

The PassBuilder class is central to setting up the optimization pipeline. This class knows about all registered passes and can construct a pass pipeline from a textual description. We can use this class to either create the pass pipeline from a description given on the command line or use a default pipeline based on the requested optimization level. We also support the use of pass plugins, such as the ppprofiler pass plugin we discussed in the previous section. With this, we can mimic part of the functionality of the opt tool and also use similar names for the command-line options.

The PassBuilder class populates an instance of a ModulePassManager class, which is the pass manager...