The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure for PolyTracker

This is a modified version of LLVM to support PolyTracker, a universal taint analysis instrumentation engine.

All of the modifications are in the default branch called polytracker. The main branch always tracks upstream LLVM.

Building polytracker-llvm

It is recommended to build this project using the Dockerfile to ensure dependencies are handled correctly. To build simply run

$ docker build -t trailofbits/polytracker-llvm .

If you get an error message

Step 13/68 : FROM builder-$TARGETARCH AS builder
invalid reference format

Try building with Docker BuildKit by running:

$ DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 docker build -t trailofbits/polytracker-llvm .

Troubleshooting

If your build process is killed by collect2 with signal 9 [Killed] it might be an indication that your machine does not have enough memory. When running Docker Desktop on MAC, the amount of memory available for containers can be controlled by "Preferences" > "Resources" > "Advanced".

Another possibililty is that the PARALLEL_LINK_JOBS argument is increased from 1.

The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure

This directory and its sub-directories contain source code for LLVM, a toolkit for the construction of highly optimized compilers, optimizers, and run-time environments.

The README briefly describes how to get started with building LLVM. For more information on how to contribute to the LLVM project, please take a look at the Contributing to LLVM guide.

Getting Started with the LLVM System

Taken from https://llvm.org/docs/GettingStarted.html.

Overview

Welcome to the LLVM project!

The LLVM project has multiple components. The core of the project is itself called "LLVM". This contains all of the tools, libraries, and header files needed to process intermediate representations and converts it into object files. Tools include an assembler, disassembler, bitcode analyzer, and bitcode optimizer. It also contains basic regression tests.

C-like languages use the Clang front end. This component compiles C, C++, Objective-C, and Objective-C++ code into LLVM bitcode -- and from there into object files, using LLVM.

Other components include: the libc++ C++ standard library, the LLD linker, and more.

Getting the Source Code and Building LLVM

The LLVM Getting Started documentation may be out of date. The Clang Getting Started page might have more accurate information.

This is an example work-flow and configuration to get and build the LLVM source:

1. Checkout LLVM (including related sub-projects like Clang):

   • git clone https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project.git

   • Or, on windows, git clone --config core.autocrlf=false https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project.git

2. Configure and build LLVM and Clang:

   • cd llvm-project

   • cmake -S llvm -B build -G <generator> [options]

     Some common build system generators are:

     • Ninja --- for generating Ninja build files. Most llvm developers use Ninja.
     • Unix Makefiles --- for generating make-compatible parallel makefiles.
     • Visual Studio --- for generating Visual Studio projects and solutions.
     • Xcode --- for generating Xcode projects.

     Some Common options:

     • -DLLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS='...' --- semicolon-separated list of the LLVM sub-projects you'd like to additionally build. Can include any of: clang, clang-tools-extra, libcxx, libcxxabi, libunwind, lldb, compiler-rt, lld, polly, or debuginfo-tests.

       For example, to build LLVM, Clang, libcxx, and libcxxabi, use -DLLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS="clang;libcxx;libcxxabi".

     • -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=directory --- Specify for directory the full path name of where you want the LLVM tools and libraries to be installed (default /usr/local).

     • -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=type --- Valid options for type are Debug, Release, RelWithDebInfo, and MinSizeRel. Default is Debug.

     • -DLLVM_ENABLE_ASSERTIONS=On --- Compile with assertion checks enabled (default is Yes for Debug builds, No for all other build types).

   • cmake --build build [-- [options] <target>] or your build system specified above directly.

     • The default target (i.e. ninja or make) will build all of LLVM.

     • The check-all target (i.e. ninja check-all) will run the regression tests to ensure everything is in working order.

     • CMake will generate targets for each tool and library, and most LLVM sub-projects generate their own check-<project> target.

     • Running a serial build will be slow. To improve speed, try running a parallel build. That's done by default in Ninja; for make, use the option -j NNN, where NNN is the number of parallel jobs, e.g. the number of CPUs you have.

   • For more information see CMake

Consult the Getting Started with LLVM page for detailed information on configuring and compiling LLVM. You can visit Directory Layout to learn about the layout of the source code tree.