[llvm-dev] RFC: Adding a JSON library to LLVM Support (original) (raw)

Patrick Boettcher via llvm-dev llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
Wed Nov 15 09:36:33 PST 2017

On Fri, 27 Oct 2017 21:53:24 +0200 Sam McCall via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

We don't have a dedicated JSON library in the LLVM tree, I'd like to add one. The pressing need is for clangd, but we have other tools that read/write JSON too.

I'm proposing we write a new one, rather than importing a third-party library (licensing/integration reasons), on or extending YamlParser/YamlIO (usability/flexibility). I lean towards a design that parses a full DOM at once, and provides literal-like syntax for composing documents.

Sorry for the late response (too late?).

There is a "modern", header-only, well-tested JSON-library which I'm using in several projects. It has a very active user- and contributor-base.

https://github.com/nlohmann/json

It's awesome! ;-) (MIT-licensed)

I've written a document laying out the reasons for taking this path, and my proposal for a design (with links to a prototype) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OEF9IauWwNuSigZzvvbjc1cVS1uGHRyGTXaoy3DjqM4/edit (Comments are enabled, but high-level discussion probably belongs on the list instead.)

What do you think? I'm particularly interested in which parts of LLVM produce/consume JSON (or might want to), and what they need. I'm mostly familiar with the stuff in clang-tools-extra.

CMake's compile-command output is in JSON. We are using it to quickly get the whole compile-line (when compiling our project with clang) to add the flags needed to generate the .ll .

regards,

Patrick.

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