This patch canonicalizes getelementptr instructions with constant
indices to use the `i8` source element type. This makes it easier for
optimizations to recognize that two GEPs are identical, because they
don't need to see past many different ways to express the same offset.
This is a first step towards
https://discourse.llvm.org/t/rfc-replacing-getelementptr-with-ptradd/68699.
This is limited to constant GEPs only for now, as they have a clear
canonical form, while we're not yet sure how exactly to deal with
variable indices.
The test llvm/test/Transforms/PhaseOrdering/switch_with_geps.ll gives
two representative examples of the kind of optimization improvement we
expect from this change. In the first test SimplifyCFG can now realize
that all switch branches are actually the same. In the second test it
can convert it into simple arithmetic. These are representative of
common optimization failures we see in Rust.
Fixes https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/69841.
Remove the known limitation of the library function call folders to only
work with top-level arrays of characters (as per the TODO comment in
the code) and allows them to also fold calls involving subobjects of
constant aggregates such as member arrays.
Add tests exercising the future enancement of folding library function
calls with arguments involving subobjects such as elements of arrays
or struct members.
