Chapter 5: Exploring Clang's Architecture

Clang is LLVM's official frontend for C-family programming languages, including C, C++, and Objective-C. It processes the input source code (parsing, type checking, and semantic reasoning, to name a few) and generates equivalent LLVM IR code, which is then taken over by other LLVM subsystems to perform optimization and native code generation. Many C-like dialects or language extensions also find Clang easy to host their implementations. For example, Clang provides official support for OpenCL, OpenMP, and CUDA C/C++. In addition to normal frontend jobs, Clang has been evolving to partition its functionalities into libraries and modules so that developers can use them to create all kinds of tools related to source code processing; for example, code refactoring, code formatting, and syntax highlighting. Learning Clang development can not only bring you more engagement into the LLVM project but also open up a wide range of possibilities...