Programming Languages Intermediate Representation

pliron is an extensible compiler IR framework in Rust, inspired by MLIR.

Build and Test

• Install the rust toolchain.

• cargo build and cargo test should build the compiler and run the testsuite.

• To see a simple IR constructed (by the print_simple test), use the following command:

  cargo test print_simple -- --show-output
  

  It should print something like:

  builtin.module @bar 
  {
    ^block1v1():
      builtin.func @foo: builtin.function <()->(builtin.integer si64)> 
      {
        ^entry_block2v1():
          c0_op3v1_res0 = test.constant builtin.integer <0: si64>;
          test.return c0_op3v1_res0
      }
  }

• pliron provides an LLVM Dialect and consequently an llvm-opt tool that can parse LLVM-IR bitcode into the LLVM dialect and output LLVM-IR bitcode.

Using the Library

Add a dependence to the crate in your Rust project.

Note: pliron, is under active development. All effort is made to ensure that the code is well tested and of production quality. The LLVM dialect, although not complete, can be useful practically. It can, for example, compile bzip2. We also plan to start work on supporting a cranelift dialect / backend soon.

Documentation

• Introduction and motivation are covered in the introductory wiki article.
• The wiki also has a comparison of pliron with other compiler projects, touching upon some design decisions.
• Code documentation can be found on docs.rs.

Some talks on pliron

• pliron: An Extensible IR Framework in Rust - IICT'24
• Declarative IR Specification in Pliron - IICT'25
• Rust(ing) the Future of Compilers: Pliron as the MLIR Alternative (No C/C++)
• Pliron Rust Workshop (6 sessions)

Related Projects

• Commonly used Pliron Dialects
• Pliron Dialect for Tensors