• Serene lang
  • Setup development environment
    • Dependencies
  • LLVM Installation
    • Emacs
  • Heads up for devs
  • Build the devtools
• How to build
• How to Debug
• Cheatsheets
• License
• Get Help

Serene lang

Build Status:

Setup development environment

Setup the githook and install dependencies using the following commands:

./builder setup

Dependencies

You would need the following dependencies to start get started with Serene development

• LLVM (LLVM Instructions coming up.)
• cmake
• ninja
• doxygen (If you want to build the docs as well)
• Valgrind
• CCache (If you want faster builds specially with the LLVM)
• Boehm GC v8.2.0 (has to be built statically and with -fPIC)

LLVM Installation

Important Note: We're trying to keep Serene up to date with the LLVM release cycle till we get to our first release. So we use the development version of the LLVM. Currently we are using 7240436c94bd02762a723a2e3551528d16c8efdb commit as our reference.

MLIR is a part of the LLVM project and in order to build it we need to build the LLVM itself as well. Here is a quick guide to build the latest version of the LLVM and MLIR.

  ## YES we're using the development version of MLIR
  git clone https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project.git

  mkdir llvm-project/build
  cd llvm-project/build

  cmake -G Ninja ../llvm \
        -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/your/target/path \
        -DLLVM_PARALLEL_COMPILE_JOBS=7 \
        -DLLVM_PARALLEL_LINK_JOBS=1 \
        -DLLVM_BUILD_EXAMPLES=ON \
        -DLLVM_TARGETS_TO_BUILD="X86" \
        -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
        -DLLVM_EXTERNAL_PROJECTS=iwyu \ # Only if you want to enable the 'Include what you use' tool
        -DLLVM_EXTERNAL_IWYU_SOURCE_DIR=/path/to/iwyu \
        -DLLVM_ENABLE_ASSERTIONS=ON \
        -DLLVM_CCACHE_BUILD=ON \
        -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON \
        -DLLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS='clang;lldb;lld;mlir;clang-tools-extra;compiler-rt;libcxx;libcxxabi;libunwind' \
        -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang \       # If you have clang installed already
        -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++ \   # If you have clang installed already
        -DLLVM_ENABLE_LLD=ON

  cmake --build .

  cmake --build . --target check-mlir

  cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/your/target/location -P cmake_install.cmake

You need to have clang and lld installed to compile the LLVM with the above command. Also if you are not using ccache just remove the option related to it from the above command.

Emacs

If you're using Emacs as your development environment just install clangd and lsp.

Heads up for devs

While you're working on Serene be mindful of:

• In DEBUG mode we dynamically link against libsan due to the fact that we build the libserene as a shared lib by default. This means we need to LD_PRELOAD the libclang_rt before we run any executable. If you're using the builder script you're all set otherwise you can run an executable like:

    LD_PRELOAD=$(clang -print-file-name=libclang_rt.asan-x86_64.so) /path/to/executable

Build the devtools

We have our own version of `mlir-opt` which is `slir-opt` and also we have an LSP server for SLIR too. Both are in the devtools directory and in order to build them all you need to do is to use -DSERENE_ENABLE_DEVTOOLS=ON parameter with cmake for example ./builder build -DSERENE_ENABLE_DEVTOOLS=ON will do the job for you.

How to build

In order to build for development (Debug mode) just use ./builder build to setup the build and build the project once and then you can just use ./builder compile to build the changed files only.

Check out the builder script for more subcommands and details.

How to Debug

Since we're using the Boehm GC, in order to use a debugger we need to turn off some of the signal handlers that the debugger sets. In order to run the debugger (by default lldb) with serenec just use the lldb-run subcommand of the builder script. In the debugger, after setting the break point on the main function (b main) then use the following commands on:

 process handle -p yes -s no -n no SIGPWR
 process handle -p yes -s no -n no SIGXCPU
 process handle -p yes -s no -n no SIGSEGV

Cheatsheets

• Modern C++ Cheatsheet

License

Copyright (c) 2019-2022 Sameer Rahmani <lxsameer@gnu.org>

Serene is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Get Help

If you need help or you just want to hangout, you can find us at:

• IRC: #serene-lang on the libera chat server
• MailingList: https://www.freelists.org/list/serene