Re: Fwd: LLVM collaboration?

[Renato Golin <renato.golin@linaro.org>]

On 11 February 2014 16:00, Jan Hubicka <hubicka@ucw.cz> wrote:
> I basically think that binutils should have a way for installed compiler to
> register a plugin and load all plugins by default (or perhaps for performance
> or upon detecking an compatible LTO object file in some way, perhaps also by
> information given in the config file) and let them claim the LTO objects they
> understand to.

Right, so this would be not necessarily related to LTO, but with the
binutils plugin system. In my very limited experience with LTO and
binutils, I can't see how that would be different from just adding a
--plugin option on the compiler, unless it's something that the linker
would detect automatically without the interference of any compiler.


> With the backward compatibility I mean that if we release a new version of
> compiler that can no longer read the LTO objects of older compiler, one can
> just install both versions and have their plugins to claim only LTO objects
> they understand. Just if they were two different compilers.

Yes, this makes total sense.


> Finally I think we can make binutils to recognize GCC/LLVM LTO objects
> as a special case and produce friendly message when user try to handle
> them witout plugin as oposed to today strange errors about file formats
> or missing symbols.

Yes, that as well seems pretty obvious, and mostly orthogonal to the
other two proposals.

cheers,
--renato

PS: Removing Chandler, as he was not the right person to look at this.
I'll check with others in the LLVM list to chime in on this thread.