BUGPOINT(1)

💖 BUGPOINT(1) 💖

okay bestie, pull up a chair, we're talking about bugpoint — the automatic test case reduction tool from the LLVM fam. this is the page from the LLVM manual set, and honestly? it's giving chaos-to-clarity pipeline. let's get into it 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

bugpoint — automatic test case reduction tool 🌸

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

bugpoint [options] [input LLVM ll/bc files] [LLVM passes] --args program
arguments

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so here's the tea 🍓: bugpoint narrows down the source of problems in LLVM tools and passes. it's literally a detective but for bugs.

it can be used to debug three types of failures:

1. optimizer crashes 💀
2. miscompilations by optimizers 😭
3. bad native code generation (including problems in the static and JIT compilers) 🙈

and its whole goal? it aims to reduce large test cases to small, useful ones. like taking your 4000-line monster of a test and serving you a cute little minimal repro. iconic behavior honestly.

for more information on the design and inner workings of bugpoint, as well as advice for using bugpoint, see LLVM bugpoint tool: design and usage <> in the LLVM distribution. (yes bestie, go read it, iykyk 👑)

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• --additional-so library — load the dynamic shared object library into the test program whenever it is run. this is useful if you are debugging programs which depend on non-LLVM libraries (such as the X or curses libraries) to run. very "bring your own dependencies" energy ✨
• --append-exit-code={true,false} — append the test programs exit code to the output file so that a change in exit code is considered a test failure. defaults to false. ngl, turn this on if exit codes are your whole personality 🌈
• --args program args — pass all arguments specified after --args to the test program whenever it runs. note that if any of the program args start with a "-", you should use:

bugpoint [bugpoint args] --args -- [program args]

the "--" right after the --args option tells bugpoint to consider any options starting with "-" to be part of the --args option, not as options to bugpoint itself. 🎀

• --tool-args tool args — pass all arguments specified after --tool-args to the LLVM tool under test (llc, lli, etc.) whenever it runs. you should use this option in the following way:

bugpoint [bugpoint args] --tool-args -- [tool args]

the "--" right after the --tool-args option tells bugpoint to consider any options starting with "-" to be part of the --tool-args option, not as options to bugpoint itself. (See --args, above.) 💅

• --safe-tool-args tool args — pass all arguments specified after --safe-tool-args to the "safe" execution tool. 🧚
• --gcc-tool-args gcc tool args — pass all arguments specified after --gcc-tool-args to the invocation of gcc. 🍓
• --opt-args opt args — pass all arguments specified after --opt-args to the invocation of opt. ⭐
• --disable-{dce,simplifycfg} — do not run the specified passes to clean up and reduce the size of the test program. by default, bugpoint uses these passes internally when attempting to reduce test programs.

bestie, heads up: if you're trying to find a bug in one of these passes, bugpoint may crash. 💀 proceed accordingly.

• --enable-valgrind — use valgrind to find faults in the optimization phase. this will allow bugpoint to find otherwise asymptomatic problems caused by memory mis-management. lowkey a glow-up for your debugging 🦋
• -find-bugs — continually randomize the specified passes and run them on the test program until a bug is found or the user kills bugpoint. main character energy, it literally will not stop until you stop it 🔥
• -help — print a summary of command line options. our beloved 💖
• --input filename — open filename and redirect the standard input of the test program, whenever it runs, to come from that file. 🎀
• --load plugin — load the dynamic object plugin into bugpoint itself. this object should register new optimization passes. once loaded, the object will add new command line options to enable various optimizations. to see the new complete list of optimizations, use the -help and --load options together; for example:

bugpoint --load myNewPass.so -help

✨

• --mlimit megabytes — specifies an upper limit on memory usage of the optimization and codegen. set to zero to disable the limit. 🌸
• --output filename — whenever the test program produces output on its standard output stream, it should match the contents of filename (the "reference output"). if you do not use this option, bugpoint will attempt to generate a reference output by compiling the program with the "safe" backend and running it. 👑
• --run-{int,jit,llc,custom} — whenever the test program is compiled, bugpoint should generate code for it using the specified code generator. these options allow you to choose the interpreter, the JIT compiler, the static native code compiler, or a custom command (see --exec-command) respectively. pick your fighter 🥊
• --safe-{llc,custom} — when debugging a code generator, bugpoint should use the specified code generator as the "safe" code generator. this is a known-good code generator used to generate the "reference output" if it has not been provided, and to compile portions of the program that as they are excluded from the testcase. these options allow you to choose the static native code compiler, or a custom command, (see --exec-command) respectively.

important bestie: the interpreter and the JIT backends cannot currently be used as the "safe" backends. no cap. 🚫

• --exec-command command — this option defines the command to use with the --run-custom and --safe-custom options to execute the bitcode testcase. this can be useful for cross-compilation. 🌈
• --compile-command command — this option defines the command to use with the --compile-custom option to compile the bitcode testcase. the command should exit with a failure exit code if the file is "interesting" and should exit with a success exit code (i.e. 0) otherwise (this is the same as if it crashed on "interesting" inputs).

this can be useful for testing compiler output without running any link or execute stages. to generate a reduced unit test, you may add CHECK directives to the testcase and pass the name of an executable compile-command script in this form:

#!/bin/sh
llc "$@"
not FileCheck [bugpoint input file].ll < bugpoint-test-program.s

this script will "fail" as long as FileCheck passes. so the result will be the minimum bitcode that passes FileCheck. ate. 💅

• --safe-path path — this option defines the path to the command to execute with the --safe-{int,jit,llc,custom} option. 🧚
• --verbose-errors={true,false} — the default behavior of bugpoint is to print "<crash>" when it finds a reduced test that crashes compilation. this flag prints the output of the crashing program to stderr. this is useful to make sure it is the same error being tracked down and not a different error that happens to crash the compiler as well. defaults to false. 🙈

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✨ EXIT STATUS ✨

if bugpoint succeeds in finding a problem, it will exit with 0. 🎉

otherwise, if an error occurs, it will exit with a non-zero value. 😭

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

opt(1) <opt.html> — go say hi to the sibling 🫶

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Author 🌸

maintained by the LLVM Team (https://llvm.org/).

Copyright 💜

2003-2026, LLVM Project

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 this was the LLVM version, dated 2026-07-16, page 22 of the BUGPOINT(1) saga. go reduce some test cases and slay ✨👑🦋