Embedded Bitcode

Little over a year ago, Apple announced at WWDC 2015 the ability to embed bitcode in Mach-O files. Bitcode is the intermediate representation used by the LLVM compiler and contains all the information required to recompile an application. Having the bitcode present, in addition to machine code, Apple can further optimize applications by compiling and linking specifically for the user’s target device. This is one approach to app thinning, which aims to achieve smaller binaries and therefore more free space on your iDevice....

June 21, 2016

Understanding the Clang AST

Clang is everywhere; It is the core of my favorite Vim plugin YouCompleteMe, it recently got supported by Microsoft Visual Studio, it is mentioned in numerous episodes of CppCast and it powers the excellent clang formatter. Naturally, I wanted to get a better understanding of how the clang front end works under the hood. Table of Content Clang Front End & AST ASTContext Classes Navigating Sources AST Traversal Recursive AST Visitor AST Matchers Cursors Building the Examples Conclusion Related Clang Front End & AST Clang is a C language family front end for LLVM....

December 31, 2015