You are really making this out to be more confusing than it is. If you're not doing that intentionally, I think you should take a step back and try to look at things again without the assumption "This is confusing and everybody disagrees with each other."
Yes, the LLVM site does say it can be used in the construction of a virtual machine. That's factual. It has been used to construct actual, shipping virtual machines (e.g. Apple's MacRuby project). But that is not its primary or only use, and I don't think anyone would make that assumption if not for the name.
As for that thread, it contains some discussion among the developers about what LLVM is good for, but actually, nobody's really disagreeing with anybody else about what LLVM is and what it's good for.
Dan Gohman starts it out claiming that LLVM IR is not a very good bytecode for a portable virtual machine, and that if you want to build a portable VM, you'll need a separate layer for your bytecode.
Chris Lattner's reply (which you seem to read as disagrement) is essentially, "Yes, you're right, but here are the upsides that we get in exchange for those weaknesses as a bytecode."
Yes, the LLVM site does say it can be used in the construction of a virtual machine. That's factual. It has been used to construct actual, shipping virtual machines (e.g. Apple's MacRuby project). But that is not its primary or only use, and I don't think anyone would make that assumption if not for the name.
As for that thread, it contains some discussion among the developers about what LLVM is good for, but actually, nobody's really disagreeing with anybody else about what LLVM is and what it's good for.
Dan Gohman starts it out claiming that LLVM IR is not a very good bytecode for a portable virtual machine, and that if you want to build a portable VM, you'll need a separate layer for your bytecode.
Chris Lattner's reply (which you seem to read as disagrement) is essentially, "Yes, you're right, but here are the upsides that we get in exchange for those weaknesses as a bytecode."