The LLVM compiler infrastructure project (formerly Low Level Virtual Machine) is a Compiler Infrastructure designed to be a set of reusable libraries with well-defined interfaces - wikipedia 
LLVM. compiler backend for multiple programming languages
- wikimedia
LLVM can translate from any language supported by gcc 4.2.1 (Ada, C, C++, Fortran, Java, Objective-C, or Objective-C++) or by clang to any of: C, C++, or MSIL by way of the "arch" command in llvm-gcc.
llvm-g++ -emit-llvm x.cpp -o program.bc -c llc -march=c program.bc -o x.c cc x.c -lstdc++ llvm-g++ x.cpp -o program.bc -c llc -march=msil program.bc -o program.msil
Translation to C has been removed from LLVM since version 3.1. It had numerous problems, to the point of not being able to compile any nontrivial program.
# History
LLVM is written in C++ and is designed for compile-time, link-time, run-time, and "idle-time" optimization of programs written in arbitrary programming languages.
Originally implemented for C and C++, the language-agnostic design (and the success) of LLVM has since spawned a wide variety of front ends: languages with compilers that use LLVM include (amongst others):
- Ada (programming language) - C Sharp (programming language) - Common Lisp - Delphi (programming language) - Fortran - LabVIEW - Haskell (programming language) - Java bytecode - Julia (programming language) - Kotlin (programming language) - Lua (programming language) - Objective-C - OpenGL Shading Language - R (programming language) - Ruby (programming language) - Rust (programming language) - Scala (programming language) - Swift (programming language), and Xojo
The LLVM project started in 2000 at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, under the direction of Vikram Adve and Chris Lattner. LLVM was originally developed as a research infrastructure to investigate dynamic compilation techniques for static and dynamic programming languages.
# See also
- Emscripten - Transpiler - WebAssembly