"ld -r" on mixed IR/non-IR objects (

[H.J. Lu]

On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 6:29 PM, H.J. Lu <hjl.tools@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 9:36 AM, H.J. Lu <hjl.tools@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 5:54 AM, H.J. Lu <hjl.tools@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 1:19 AM, Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org> wrote:
>>>>> On 12/07/2010 04:20 PM, Andi Kleen wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The only problem left is mixing of lto and non lto objects. this right
>>>>>> now is not handled. IMHO still the best way to handle it is to use
>>>>>> slim lto and then simply separate link the "left overs" after deleting
>>>>>> the LTO objects. This can be actually done with objcopy (with some
>>>>>> limitations), doesn't even need linker support.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Quite possibly a better way to deal with that is to provide a mechanism
>>>>> for encapsulating arbitrary binary code objects inside the LTO IR.
>>>>
>>>> Then you would need to teach your assembler and everything
>>>
>>> The magic section is generated by linker directly. No changes to
>>> assembler is required.
>>>
>>>> else that may generate ELF objects to generate this magic object. But why
>>>> not just ELF directly? that is what it is after all.
>>>
>>> My proposal isn't specific to ELF.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> To be honest I don't really see the point of all this complexity you
>>>> guys are proposing just to save fat LTO. Fat LTO is always a bad idea
>>>> because it's slow and  does lots of redundant work. If LTO is to become
>>>> a more wide spread mode it has to go simply because of the poor
>>>> performance.
>>>>
>>>> With slim LTO passthrough is  very straight-forward: simple pass
>>>> through every section that is not LTO and generate code for the LTO
>>>> sections. No new magic sections needed at all.
>>>>
>>>
>>> My proposal works on both fat and slim LTO objects.  The idea is
>>> you can use "ld -r" on any combination of inputs and its output
>>> still works as before "ld -r".
>>>
>>
>> Here is the revised proposal.
>>
>
> The initial implementation of my proposal is available on hjl/lto-mixed
> branch at
>
> http://git.kernel.org/?p=devel/binutils/hjl/x86.git;a=summary
>
> Simple case works.  More cleanups are needed.  Feedbacks
> are welcome.
>

I checked in patches to remove temporary files.


-- 
H.J.