This patch is part of a set of patches that add an -fextend-lifetimes flag to clang, which extends the lifetimes of local variables and parameters for improved debuggability. In addition to that flag, the patch series adds a new function attribute to disable the post-RA scheduler (which is applied by -fextend-lifetimes), a pragma to selectively disable -fextend-lifetimes, and an -fextend-this-ptr flag which functions as -fextend-lifetimes for this pointers only. All changes and tests in these patches were written by @wolfgangp, though I will be managing these reviews and addressing any comments raised. Discussion on the approach of this patch series as a whole should be directed to the 3rd patch, D157613, in order to simplify review.
This particular patch implements a new intrinsic instruction in LLVM, llvm.fake.use in IR and FAKE_USE in MIR, that takes a single operand and has no effect other than "using" its operand, to ensure that its operand remains live until after the fake use. This patch does not emit fake uses anywhere; the next patch in this sequence causes them to be emitted from the clang frontend, such that for each variable (or this) a fake.use operand is inserted at the end of that variable's scope, using that variable's value. This patch covers everything post-frontend, which is largely just the basic plumbing for a new intrinsic/instruction, along with a few steps to preserve the fake uses through optimizations (such as moving them ahead of a tail call).
Could we say "is a no-op" or something to even more explicitly express that there's no visible effect of this intrinsic?