nBallerina

Translate Ballerina IR to LLVM IR.

Building from source in Ubuntu 20.04

Prerequisites

• sudo apt install build-essential llvm-11-dev lld-11 cmake cargo python3-pip libgtest-dev
• pip3 install lit filecheck

Build steps

1. cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++-11 -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang-11 -S . -B build/
2. cmake --build ./build/ -- -j

This will build:

• The Rust runtime : build/runtime/rust_rt/release/libballerina_rt.a
• The C runtime : build/runtime/c_rt/libballerina_crt.a
• The nballerinacc (BIR to LLVM IR converter) app : build/nballerinacc

Usage

• Run nballerinacc against a BIR dump file (using bal build -dump-bir-file=<output> <input>) to generate the .ll LLVM IR file

    ./nballerinacc <bir dump file path>
  

• The .ll file can be compiled into an executable using clang and the compiled runtime library

    clang-11 --target=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu -c -O3 -flto=thin -Wno-override-module -o $filename.o $filename.ll
    clang-11 -flto=thin -fuse-ld=lld-11 -Lruntime/rust_rt/release/ -Lruntime/c_rt/ -lballerina_rt -lballerina_crt -lpthread -ldl -o $filename.out -O3 $filename.o 
  

Run tests

1. Install Java 11 runtime (e.g. openjdk-11-jre on ubuntu)

2. Create JAVA_HOME environment variable and point it to the Java install dir

3. Get this specific Ballerina version : 2.0.0-alpha8-20210419-135100-df7a4e3f.zip)

4. Extract Ballerina pack and add the bin folder with the bal executable to your PATH system variable

5. Run:

    cmake --build ./build/ -t check
   

To codegen the C header for the Rust runtime lib

1. Install cbindgen

    cargo install cbindgen
   

2. Execute build command

    cmake --build ./build/ -t runtime_header
   

3. The generated header will be at : runtime/include/ballerina_rt.h

Check whether LTO is inlining runtime functions

1. Execute command

    cmake --build ./build/ -t check_lto
   

Building from source in MacOSX 10.15.0

Prerequisites

• If you haven’t installed xcode and brew yet, please install them. Following steps assumes that xcode and brew are already installed.
• brew install llvm@11 rust python3
• brew postinstall python3
• pip3 install lit filecheck

Build steps

1. cd build
2. cmake ../ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DLLVM_DIR=/usr/local/opt/llvm/lib/cmake/llvm/ -DCMAKE_CXX_STANDARD=14
3. make -j

This will build:

• The Rust runtime : runtime/target/release/libballerina_rt.so
• The nballerinacc (BIR to LLVM IR converter) app : build/nballerinacc

Run tests

1. Install Java 11 runtime (e.g. JRE 11 package for MacOS)

2. Create JAVA_HOME environment variable and point it to the Java install dir

3. Get this specific Ballerina version : 2.0.0-alpha8-20210419-135100-df7a4e3f.zip)

4. Extract Ballerina pack and add the bin folder with the bal executable to your PATH system variable

5. Navigate to nBallerina build/ folder and run tests

    cd build/
    make check
   

Usage

• Run nballerinacc against a BIR dump file to generate the .ll LLVM IR file

    ./nballerinacc ../compiler/main-bir-dump -o main.ll
  

• The .ll file can be compiled into an a.out by invoking clang with -O0 option.

    clang -O0 main.ll
  

  • The -O0 is required because the optimizer will otherwise optimize everything away.

• Running the a.out and checking the return value on the command-line by using echo $? will yield the int value returned by the function.

• The a.out can be disassembled using objdump -d to see the machine instructions

To codegen the C header for the Rust runtime lib

1. Install cbindgen

    cargo install cbindgen
   

• cargo installs the dependencies in user's home directory. Hence, add ~/.cargo/bin to your PATH system variable. export PATH=$PATH:~/.cargo/bin

2. Execute build command

    cd build/
    make runtime_header
   

3. The generated header will be at : runtime/include/ballerina_rt.h

Building from source in Windows 10(x64)

Prerequisites

• Install cargo
• Install python-3
• Build LLVM from source

  • Install Build Tools for Visual Studio 2019. Please make sure that tools should be installed with C++ CMake tools for Windows and C++ ATL for latest v142 build tools (x86 & x64) which are optional.

  • Download the LLVM source from here and extract.

  • Create the build directory. Run following commands in x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2019.

    cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -Thost=x64 -G "Visual Studio 16 2019" -A x64 -DLLVM_USE_CRT_RELEASE=MT -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=install -S . -B build\
    cmake --build .\build -t install -- /p:configuration=Release
    

Build steps

Clone the nballerina source and run below commands.

1. cmake -DLLVM_DIR=<LLVM_INSTALL_PATH>\lib\cmake\llvm -S . -B .\build
2. cmake --build .\build --config Release

Usage

• Output binary will be at Release\nballerinacc.exe

• Run nballerinacc against a BIR dump file to generate the .ll LLVM IR file

    nballerinacc.exe  ../../compiler/main-bir-dump -o main.ll
  

• Create the executable file and execute it

    clang -O0 main.ll
    a.exe
  

Run tests

1. Install cbindgen

    cargo install cbindgen
   

2. Install lit

    pip3 Install lit filecheck
   

3. Install java 11 and set up JAVA_HOME in your PATH system variable

4. Get this specific Ballerina version : 2.0.0-alpha8-20210419-135100-df7a4e3f.zip)

5. Extract Ballerina pack and add the bin folder with the ballerina executable to your PATH system variable

6. Run tests

    msbuild test /p:configuration=Release
   

Setting up for Development (Ubuntu 20.04)

• First setup dev environment following the build from source guide for your platform

• Install the following additional dependencies

    sudo apt install gcovr clang-tidy (or a newer version)
  

Debug Builds

By default debug build enables both sanitizers (via gcc or clang) and static analysis (via clang-tidy). To build a debug build use the following command template:

    cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release <options> -S . -B build/
    cmake --build ./build/

Valid options:

• -DENABLE_SANITIZER=ON/OFF : Enable sanitizers for GCC and Clang++ (Default ON)
  • Valid only for debug builds
• -DENABLE_ANALYSE=ON/OFF : Enable static analysis if clang-tidy is detected (Default ON)
  • Valid only for debug builds
• -DENABLE_COVERAGE=ON/OFF : Enable code coverage (Default OFF)
  • Valid only for debug builds
  • Launch code coverage test via cd build; cmake --build . -t nballerinacc_coverage
• -DSKIP_BIR_GEN=ON : Skip the execution of ballerina build --dump-file for check target, if dump files already exists
  • Set this to speed up LIT test execution.
  • -USKIP_BIR_GEN To unset it
• -DCLANG_TIDY_OVERRIDE=<compiler name> : Override default clang-tidy executable name e.g. -DCLANG_TIDY_OVERRIDE=clang-tidy-11
  • -DCLANG_TIDY_OVERRIDE To unset it
• -DCHECK_FILTER="--filter=<regex>" : Filter tests to run. e.g. -DCHECK_FILTER="--filter=\"simpleMain.bal\"", -DCHECK_FILTER="--filter=\"functions\""
  • -UCHECK_FILTER To unset it
• -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=<compiler name> : Override default compiler e.g. -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++-11, -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++
  • -UCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER To unset it

Additional notes:

• Recommend not to use parallel builds with static analysis ON; otherwise the suggestions dumped on stdout will be hard to parse
• To disable certain clang-tidy checks, add them to the list @ line 11 in the Clang-tidy.cmake file
• To enable/disable specific sanitizers, edit the add_sanitizers macro in Sanitizers.cmake file