Category LLVM Backend

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LLVM Backend

tiko compiles each module to textual LLVM IR and runs clang -c on it to make an object. clang then drives the link. There is no other code generator and no fallback. So there is no -gen option, and tiko -gen llvm hello.tiko is refused:

tiko-lang: error TKO0100: unknown option '-gen'

What it is

The IR comes from tiko's own pipeline:

1. the frontend builds a typed AST;
2. lowering turns it into MIR, a typed IR over basic blocks with its own verifier;
3. an ABI pass rewrites procedure signatures and calls for the target's C calling convention, one classifier each for Win64, SysV AMD64 and Apple's AAPCS64;
4. the emitter writes the LLVM IR.

--emit-ir writes that IR and stops: to standard output, or with -o x.ll to that file. --emit-asm runs clang -S on it and stops, writing x.s, or <source>.s with no -o. With several modules and one -o, each is <name>.<n>.ll (or .s). -v echoes every clang invocation, and --keep-temps keeps the .ll files.

Each target has its own triple:

Target	clang triple
windows-x86_64 (default on Windows)	x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
linux-x86_64 (default on Linux)	x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
macos-arm64 (default on macOS)	arm64-apple-macosx13.0

What you need: clang

clang 18 or newer, installed by you. Nothing is bundled.

tiko runs whatever TIKO_CLANG names. Without it, tiko runs C:\Program Files\LLVM\bin\clang.exe on Windows, /usr/bin/clang on Linux and Homebrew's /opt/homebrew/opt/llvm/bin/clang on macOS, and searches PATH only when that file is absent. It takes llvm-ar and llvm-rc from the same directory. The link uses lld; on Linux it falls back to the system ld when there is no ld.lld beside clang or in /usr/bin. On macOS the link uses Apple's linker and the macOS SDK from Xcode's Command Line Tools, and it searches Homebrew's /opt/homebrew/lib after your own library paths.

If clang is not there, tiko says so and stops:

tiko-lang: error TKO0111: no usable toolchain: clang not found at 'C:/nope/clang.exe' -- set TIKO_CLANG to the clang to use

Inline ASM

Inline ASM is refused:

error TKO0407: inline assembly is not supported; compile that module with fbc

An ASM block is raw assembler text with direct symbol references. LLVM wants constraint strings and operands, and anything short of refusing it produces plausible-but-wrong code.

Optimisation and debug information

• -O0 to -O3 (written joined: -O2) are passed through to clang. The corpus programs give the same output at all four levels.
• -g emits DWARF line tables. gdb breaks, steps and unwinds on both Windows targets and on Linux. Variables are not described yet.

How it is verified

• Self-hosting. tiko compiles itself to a byte-identical fixpoint on windows-x86_64 and linux-x86_64, at -O0 and -O2, and on macos-arm64 at -O0 (build/bootstrap.sh).
• Codegen coverage. build/icescan.sh compiles all 2,709 corpus files to objects and reports anything the emitter or clang refuses: 21 failures in 12 files at the last run.

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