The top-level of the C++ API is the gccjit::context type.
A gccjit::context instance encapsulates the state of a compilation.
You can set up options on it, and add types, functions and code. Invoking gccjit::context::compile() on it gives you a gcc_jit_result *.
It is a thin wrapper around the C API’s gcc_jit_context *.
Contexts are the unit of lifetime-management within the API: objects have their lifetime bounded by the context they are created within, and cleanup of such objects is done for you when the context is released.
This function acquires a new gccjit::context instance, which is independent of any others that may be present within this process.
This function releases all resources associated with the given context. Both the context itself and all of its gccjit::object * instances are cleaned up. It should be called exactly once on a given context.
It is invalid to use the context or any of its “contextual” objects after calling this.
ctxt.release ();
Given an existing JIT context, create a child context.
The child inherits a copy of all option-settings from the parent.
The child can reference objects created within the parent, but not vice-versa.
The lifetime of the child context must be bounded by that of the parent: you should release a child context before releasing the parent context.
If you use a function from a parent context within a child context, you have to compile the parent context before you can compile the child context, and the gccjit::result of the parent context must outlive the gccjit::result of the child context.
This allows caching of shared initializations. For example, you could create types and declarations of global functions in a parent context once within a process, and then create child contexts whenever a function or loop becomes hot. Each such child context can be used for JIT-compiling just one function or loop, but can reference types and helper functions created within the parent context.
Contexts can be arbitrarily nested, provided the above rules are followed, but it’s probably not worth going above 2 or 3 levels, and there will likely be a performance hit for such nesting.
Instances of gccjit::context created via gccjit::context::acquire() are independent from each other: only one thread may use a given context at once, but multiple threads could each have their own contexts without needing locks.
Contexts created via gccjit::context::new_child_context() are related to their parent context. They can be partitioned by their ultimate ancestor into independent “family trees”. Only one thread within a process may use a given “family tree” of such contexts at once, and if you’re using multiple threads you should provide your own locking around entire such context partitions.
You can only compile and get code from a context if no errors occur.
In general, if an error occurs when using an API entrypoint, it returns NULL. You don’t have to check everywhere for NULL results, since the API gracefully handles a NULL being passed in for any argument.
Errors are printed on stderr and can be queried using gccjit::context::get_first_error().
Returns the first error message that occurred on the context.
The returned string is valid for the rest of the lifetime of the context.
If no errors occurred, this will be NULL.
To help with debugging: dump a C-like representation to the given path, describing what’s been set up on the context.
If “update_locations” is true, then also set up gccjit::location information throughout the context, pointing at the dump file as if it were a source file. This may be of use in conjunction with GCCJIT::BOOL_OPTION_DEBUGINFO to allow stepping through the code in a debugger.
This is a thin wrapper around the C API gcc_jit_context_dump_reproducer_to_file(), and hence works the same way.
Note that the generated source is C code, not C++; this might be of use for seeing what the C++ bindings are doing at the C level.
Set a string option of the context.
This is a thin wrapper around the C API gcc_jit_context_set_str_option(); the options have the same meaning.
Set a boolean option of the context.
This is a thin wrapper around the C API gcc_jit_context_set_bool_option(); the options have the same meaning.
Set an integer option of the context.
This is a thin wrapper around the C API gcc_jit_context_set_int_option(); the options have the same meaning.