Finding bugs in LLVM IR optimisers: programmatically generate small (loop free, no control flow) functions, run your favourite middle end passes, and verify the output is equivalent!
https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1510
(Uses Alive to verify and 4000 CPUs of compute.)
miniblog.
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LLVM's lit tool for testing files is the most successful testing DSL I've ever seen. It's used a decent number of projects outside of LLVM.
By contrast I don't see many folks using e.g. Cucumber these days.
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Wonderful post from the lead LLVM maintainer reflecting on how the project is run, the design issues in LLVM today, and opportunities to make it better:
Bril is a cute intermediate language for teaching (think simplified LLVM IR): https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~asampson/blog/bril.html
The idea of providing a standard JSON format to help students write basic passes is really elegant.
