In http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2020-July/143257.html we have mentioned our plans to make some of the incremental compilation facilities available in llvm mainline.
This patch proposes a minimal version of a repl, clang-repl, which enables interpreter-like interaction for C++. For instance:
./bin/clang-repl clang-repl> int i = 42; clang-repl> extern "C" int printf(const char*,...); clang-repl> auto r1 = printf("i=%d\n", i); i=42 clang-repl> quit
The patch allows very limited functionality, for example, it crashes on invalid C++. The design of the proposed patch follows closely the design of cling. The idea is to gather feedback and gradually evolve both clang-repl and cling to what the community agrees upon.
The IncrementalParser class is responsible for driving the clang parser and codegen and allows the compiler infrastructure to process more than one input. Every input adds to the “ever-growing” translation unit. That model is enabled by an IncrementalAction which prevents teardown when HandleTranslationUnit.
The IncrementalExecutor class hides some of the underlying implementation details of the concrete JIT infrastructure. It exposes the minimal set of functionality required by our incremental compiler/interpreter.
The Transaction class keeps track of the AST and the LLVM IR for each incremental input. That tracking information will be later used to implement error recovery.
The Interpreter class orchestrates the IncrementalParser and the IncrementalExecutor to model interpreter-like behavior. It provides the public API which can be used (in future) when using the interpreter library.
I think this and the change above requires updating WrapperFrontendAction to also forward these functions to the wrapped action. Otherwise wrapping actions would change their behaviour. See the other virtual functions there.