Installing the Plugin project
How to install the Plugin project on your machine
This page takes you through the steps needed to get the plugin project downloaded and installed on your machine. It also describes how to build it from scratch.
Prerequisites
The plugin system works currently on Linux (though it will probably work on other Unixes and Cygwin). You will also need:
| libiberty | Included in the GCC distribution |
| libffi | Included in the GCC distribution |
| libxml2 | from xmlsoft or most package managers |
Dowloading
The first step is to download the code. This can be done by getting the latest release from the SourceForge download site, here.
Once the package is downloaded, you will find the following structure in the file:
| Directory/File | Description |
|---|---|
| libplugin | This is the main library which is used to build plugin applications. The directory contains both prebuilt shared and static libraries and header files for building applications and plugins |
| doc | Copy of this documentation |
| message | A plugin to make printing messages and logging easy. This plugin should work for any plugin application |
| gcc.patch | A patch to for GCC's trunk (as of version 4.4.0 20080422). This patch plugin enables GCC. |
| gcc.pass-manager | A plugin for GCC which allows you to respond to passes being executed and also to control what passes get executed |
| gcc.perfmon | A plugin for GCC. It provides simple instrumentation to get cycle counts. |
| gcc.print | A few printing functions, suitable for use with the message plugin |
| gcc.rtl-unroll-and-peel-loops | Provides control over RTL unrolling and peeling |
| gcc.toplev | A few extension points in GCC's toplev.c - giving control over the earliest stages of the compiler |
| gcc.print.passes.xml | A plugin which prints all the passes that are executed on your code |
| gcc.print.unrollable-loops.xml | A plugin which prints all the loops that can be unrolled |
| gcc.print.unrolled-loops.xml | A plugin which prints all the loops that that are unrolled |
You should unpack these files somewhere.
If you aren't planning to use the GCC plugins then you are pretty much done. The prebuilt libraries should work for creating your own plugin applications. Have a look at the tutorials on this site for your next steps.
Installing for GCC
If you are intending to use the GCC plugins you will also need to download the source for GCC. You can find information about how to do that here. Check that you can build and install GCC by itself.
As quick crib, here's what I usually do to configure and install GCC:
svn -q checkout svn://gcc.gnu.org/svn/gcc/trunk my-gcc-dir mkdir gcc.obj mkdir gcc.bin cd gcc.obj my-gcc-dir/configure --prefix=path-to-gcc.bin/ --program-prefix=plugin- --enable-languages=c make && make install; beep
So, hopefully you now have your own GCC up and running. Now we have to apply the patch, gcc.patch, which is in the download distribution. This should be something like:
patch my-gcc-dir path-to-gcc.patch
Sadly, we aren't quite done yet. Embedded in the patch are a couple of nasty, hard-coded directories. Yuck. These will disappear once I read about auto tools and then the whole build/install process should become a one click process. Until then, well, "Sorry".
In your GCC source directory, go to my-gcc-dir/gcc/Makefile.in. On lines 278 and 279 there are two hard coded paths to /home/hleather/workspace/plugin/. You need to replace these so that they point to where you unpacked the libplugin distribution.
With luck you should now be able to make and install GCC again:
cd gcc.obj make && make install; beep
As a quick test, make a file, foo.c, somewhere, containing:
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
printf( "hello\n" );
return 0;
}
And compile it with:
GCC_PLUGIN_LOGGING=true path-to-gcc.bin/bin/plugin-gcc foo.c
You should see something like:
/home/hleather/temp/gcc.bin/bin/../libexec/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.4.0/cc1 - Log:Plugin system starting with path: (null) /home/hleather/temp/gcc.bin/bin/../libexec/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.4.0/cc1 - Log:Plugin system started /home/hleather/temp/gcc.bin/bin/../libexec/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.4.0/cc1 - Log:Plugin system stopping /home/hleather/temp/gcc.bin/bin/../libexec/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.4.0/cc1 - Log:Plugin system stopped /home/hleather/temp/gcc.bin/bin/../libexec/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.4.0/cc1 - Log:Plugin system cleaning up /home/hleather/temp/gcc.bin/bin/../libexec/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.4.0/cc1 - Log:Plugin system cleaned up
Which shows that the plugin system is working (no plugins were loaded because we didn't specify a plugin path).
Congratulations! I know that is all a bit painful. It will get better eventually, I promise. Your next steps should probably be to have a look at some of the tutorials on this site.
Building
Check out the source from source forge. You also need the GCC source built as above. You will need the Saxon 9 XSL processor and Java 1.6. Finally, to build the documentation you will need DOxygen and Apache Forrest.
Again, there are some nasty hard coded paths in the top level make file. They are only the ones at the top, though, the ones starting with '/home/hleather/'. Replace these with suitable paths on your system.
After that, apply the patch to GCC (as above).
Finally, you can (hopefully) build with make, or do the whole thing with make dist, which builds docs and a distributable zip as well.