Re: [PATCH 0/2] alpha: enable building with clang

[Matt Turner]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2026 at 12:24 PM Nick Desaulniers
<ndesaulniers@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2026 at 8:28 PM Matt Turner <mattst88@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Aug 17, 2026 at 7:16 PM Nick Desaulniers
> > <ndesaulniers@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > On Mon, Aug 03, 2026 at 01:08:40PM -0400, Matt Turner wrote:
> > > > > Two small patches to let the alpha kernel build with clang.
> > > >
> > > I'm curious, since we've yet to have such a case of an out of tree
> > > llvm backend, what's your plan, if any, to upstream your backend in
> > > llvm-project proper? Perhaps as an experimental backend?  We have bugs
> > > filed in our issue track for m68k which is experimental (but upstream)
> > > in LLVM.
> >
> > It builds a kernel that boots in qemu and on real hardware.
>
> Wild.  Where did you even get real hardware? I know very little about Alpha.

Mostly eBay :)

... along with most of my other pet computers (https://mattst88.com/computers/)

> >
> > As of two days ago, it's capable of building itself and the 373
> > packages of a Gentoo stage3 + a few other things. These include glibc
> > and other core components (in a qemu-backend container on a fast
> > multicore amd64 system).
>
> I haven't kept up with Adhemerval's work on building glibc with clang,
> but pretty wild to hear about glibc building with clang period, for
> alpha no less.

What a time to be alive!

> >
> > I would very much prefer to have the backend upstream, and I plan to
> > start a discussion on discourse.llvm.org this week. I think an
> > experimental backend is probably the limit of what makes sense for
> > Alpha?
>
> I agree. An RFC on discourse is the way to go. I'd use m68k as an example.

Thank you. I'll find the m68k discussion and model mine on that
(assuming they were successful).

> >
> > If you have advice on going about this, I would welcome it (privately
> > or in reply to this thread).
> >
> > Current diffstat is
> >
> > 461 files changed, 29735 insertions(+), 88 deletions(-)
>
> Only advice is that if any of that was AI generated, please do take
> the time to review LLVM's AI policy.  Reviewers have been getting
> crunched by low quality AI commits recently, and are a bit salty all
> around.
>
> https://llvm.org/docs/AIToolPolicy.html

Indeed, I have been, but my goal is to do enough self-review such that
no one would be able to tell that an LLM was involved. I will of
course disclose that LLMs were used.