On Thu, 2026-04-23 at 01:30 +1000, Damien Stewart wrote: > On 21/4/26 3:12 pm, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: > > The LLVM error messages don't mean that the binaries were built with > > LLVM/Clang > > but that LLVM is being used for software-rendering. The underlying software > > is > > called llvmpipe. > > > > See:https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/llvmpipe.html > > > > Since LLVM does not support all features on 32-bit PowerPC, llvmpipe has > > some > > issues on this architecture. > > Thanks for the info. See, I found the same thing when I first looked up > this "LLVM error relocation type not implemented" message a while back. > Most results returned related to Clang and/or linker. I'm not trying to > compile, I'm running a binary, so that's too late. Even now, most > results talk about linkers and not graphics even when using "llvmpipe" > as a search term. Clearly, the error is too vague and LLVMPipe needs to > mention itself, and how it relates to graphics. Then it would be more > obvious. Typical computer errors. And something like "LLVM" when > unpacked describes a hardware emulator to me, so these people should > come up with better names. :-?
Well, to be fair, LLVM really a compiler but a library. You get the compiler when you combine a frontend like rustc, clang or flang with LLVM. This modularity allows one to use the LLVM library very flexible and at some point someone came up with the idea to use it for software rendering. I'm not really an expert on Mesa or llvmpipe, but I think this kind of resusability is very useful and allows developers to save a lot of engineering efforts that would otherwise be needed to implement a code generation backend for a certain architecture. GCC actually copied the idea with libgccjit which will eventually and hopefully allow the Rust compiler to support many more architectures not supported by LLVM. > So, most G4 Mac people using newest graphic cards without full drivers > would be affected, while G5 people should be fine when needing a > fallback. This would explain why mine breaks. My kernel is 64 bit but I > found out I had a 32 bit userland, so must have accidentally picked the > wrong install image. My Debian 64 has no such issues, if just a bit slow > using software rendering, since I don't have a HD6000 or 3d supported > card plugged in. I think you should not be affected when using hardware acceleration since then you wouldn't be using llvmpipe in the first place. If you're seeing LLVM errors when running graphics applications, it means you're using software rendering, not hardware rendering. So, you should figure out why hardware rendering is not enable on your machine. > Slightly off topic, but at this point, I wonder if AI could be used for > good use to scrape through the AMD driver sources and locate endian > issues. Then suggest how to fix. I'm thinking AI could be good for > finding endian issues in frequently updated code that's not practical to > fix by hand for every software update. It should already be good enough. Why not give it a try yourself? Adrian -- .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz : :' : Debian Developer `. `' Physicist `- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
