[IR] Introduce the opaque pointer type

The opaque pointer type is essentially just a normal pointer type with a
null pointee type.

This also adds support for the opaque pointer type to the bitcode
reader/writer, as well as to textual IR.

To avoid confusion with existing pointer types, we disallow creating a
pointer to an opaque pointer.

Opaque pointer types should not be widely used at this point since many
parts of LLVM still do not support them. The next steps are to add some
very simple use cases of opaque pointers to make sure they work, then
start pretending that all pointers are opaque pointers and see what
breaks.

https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2021-May/150359.html

Reviewed By: dblaikie, dexonsmith, pcc

Differential Revision: https://reviews.llvm.org/D101704

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/llvm/lib/Bitcode/Reader/BitcodeReader.cpp b/llvm/lib/Bitcode/Reader/BitcodeReader.cpp
index 91a65c7..3a56a67 100644
--- a/llvm/lib/Bitcode/Reader/BitcodeReader.cpp
+++ b/llvm/lib/Bitcode/Reader/BitcodeReader.cpp
@@ -1807,6 +1807,13 @@ Error BitcodeReader::parseTypeTableBody() {
       ResultTy = PointerType::get(ResultTy, AddressSpace);
       break;
     }
+    case bitc::TYPE_CODE_OPAQUE_POINTER: { // OPAQUE_POINTER: [addrspace]
+      if (Record.size() != 1)
+        return error("Invalid record");
+      unsigned AddressSpace = Record[0];
+      ResultTy = PointerType::get(Context, AddressSpace);
+      break;
+    }
     case bitc::TYPE_CODE_FUNCTION_OLD: {
       // Deprecated, but still needed to read old bitcode files.
       // FUNCTION: [vararg, attrid, retty, paramty x N]