Welcome to LLVM on Windows! This document only covers LLVM on Windows using Visual Studio, not mingw or cygwin. In order to get started, you first need to know some basic information.

There are many different projects that compose LLVM. The first piece is the LLVM suite. This contains all of the tools, libraries, and header files needed to use LLVM. It contains an assembler, disassembler, bitcode analyzer and bitcode optimizer. It also contains basic regression tests that can be used to test the LLVM tools and the Clang front end.

The second piece is the Clang front end. This component compiles C, C++, Objective C, and Objective C++ code into LLVM bitcode. Clang typically uses LLVM libraries to optimize the bitcode and emit machine code. LLVM fully supports the COFF object file format, which is compatible with all other existing Windows toolchains.

The last major part of LLVM, the execution Test Suite, does not run on Windows, and this document does not discuss it.

Additional information about the LLVM directory structure and tool chain can be found on the main Getting Started with the LLVM System page.