IRBuilder helps users manipulate LLVM IR basic blocks. For example, add or remove instructions. So this could be used to build a frontend of a language or build target independent optimizers that manipulate LLVM IRs.

First, we can make Module/Function using the following code:

Module* makeLLVMModule() {
    // Module construction
    Module* mod = new Module("test", getGlobalContext());

    // returns Constant* because it will return a cast of the
    // existing function if the function already existed with 
    // a different prototype.
    Constant* c = mod->getOrInsertFunction("mul_add",
                                          IntegerType::get(32),
                                          IntegerType::get(32),
                                          IntegerType::get(32),
                                          IntegerType::get(32),
                                          NULL);

    Function* mul_add = cast<Function>(c);
    mul_add->setCallingConv(CallingConv::c);
    
    // (not necessary) set names to arguments
    Function::arg_iterator args = mul_add->arg_begin();
    Value* x = args++;
    x->setName("x");
    Value* y = args++;
    y->setName("y");
    Value* z = args++;
    z->setName("z");

After creating blocks, we build BasicBlock to contain the function, and use IRBuilder to create and append instructions to the end of a block.

    BasicBlock* block = BasicBlock::Create(getGlobalContext(), "entry", mul_add);
    IRBuilder<> builder(block);
    Value* tmp = builder.CreateBinOp(Instruction::Mul,
                                     x, y, "tmp");
    Value* tmp2 = builder.CreateBinOp(Instruction::Add,
                                      tmp, z, "tmp2");
    builder.CreateRet(tmp2);
  
    return mod;
}

To build, we need some compiler flags to link with LLVM. Those are done using `llvm-config –cxxflags –ldflags –libs core`

We could actually have multiple BasicBlocks for a function which just requires extra work of instantiating more BasicBlocks and connecting them with control flow using branch instructions.

Reference

LLVM Tutorial: http://releases.llvm.org/2.6/docs/tutorial/ (first two are helpful for this)