lightweight wrapper around basic LLVM functionality
Project description
A lightweight LLVM python binding for writing JIT compilers
The old llvmpy binding exposes a lot of LLVM APIs but the mapping of C++-style memory management to Python is error prone. Numba and many JIT compilers do not need a full LLVM API. Only the IR builder, optimizer, and JIT compiler APIs are necessary.
llvmlite is a project originally tailored for Numba’s needs, using the following approach:
A small C wrapper around the parts of the LLVM C++ API we need that are not already exposed by the LLVM C API.
A ctypes Python wrapper around the C API.
A pure Python implementation of the subset of the LLVM IR builder that we need for Numba.
Key Benefits
The IR builder is pure Python code and decoupled from LLVM’s frequently-changing C++ APIs.
Materializing a LLVM module calls LLVM’s IR parser which provides better error messages than step-by-step IR building through the C++ API (no more segfaults or process aborts).
Most of llvmlite uses the LLVM C API which is small but very stable (low maintenance when changing LLVM version).
The binding is not a Python C-extension, but a plain DLL accessed using ctypes (no need to wrestle with Python’s compiler requirements and C++ 11 compatibility).
The Python binding layer has sane memory management.
llvmlite is quite faster than llvmpy’s thanks to a much simpler architeture (the Numba test suite is twice faster than it was).
llvmpy Compatibility Layer
The llvmlite.llvmpy namespace provides a minimal llvmpy compatibility layer.
Compatibility
llvmlite works with Python 2.6 or greater (including Python 3.3 or greater).
Documentation
You’ll find the documentation at http://llvmlite.pydata.org
Pre-built binaries
We recommend you use the binaries provided by the Numba team for the Conda package manager. You can find them in Numba’s binstar channel <https://binstar.org/numba>. For example:
$ conda install --channel=numba llvmlite
(or, simply, the official llvmlite package provided in the Anaconda distribution)
Other build methods
If you don’t want to use our pre-built packages, you can compile and install llvmlite yourself. The documentation will teach you how: http://llvmlite.pydata.org/en/latest/install/index.html
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