Chapter 10: Processing LLVM IR
In the previous chapter, we learned about PassManager and AnalysisManager in LLVM. We went through some tutorials for developing an LLVM pass and how to retrieve program analysis data via AnalysisManager. The knowledge and skills we acquired help to build the foundation for developers to create composable building blocks for code transformation and program analysis.
In this chapter, we are going to focus on the methodology of processing LLVM IR. LLVM IR is a target-independent intermediate representation for program analysis and compiler transformation. You can think of LLVM IR as an alternative form of the code you want to optimize and compile. However, different from the C/C++ code you're familiar with, LLVM IR describes the program in a different way – we will give you a more concrete idea later. The majority of the magic that's done by LLVM that makes the input program faster or smaller after the compilation process is performed...
