[cfe-dev] [llvm-dev] [RFC] Open sourcing and contributing TAPI back to the LLVM community

[Jake Ehrlich via cfe-dev]

Also I mainly care about getting the ELF part of this working so it would
be nice to have an informal owner of the MachO part.

On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 4:15 PM John Ericson <john.ericson at obsidian.systems>
wrote:

> That sounds great to me, thanks Jake. I'm not Jurgen either, of course,
> but I'm happy to assist you if he is unavailable. I'm not also not
> qualified to audit the license, but do note Apple formally also released
> some code at https://opensource.apple.com/tarballs/tapi/. If there's
> anything else I can do to help, let me know.
>
> Cheers,
>
> John
>
> On 04/10/2018 06:13 PM, Jake Ehrlich wrote:
>
> Ideally Jurgen would cut up the code on github, put up an initial diff for
> a minimal viable tool, and then we would review it and then continue to
> copy code from the github repo into llvm and review it. I'm also willing to
> do that if Jurgen doesn't want to at this point though. I'd like the OK
> from Jurgen on that and I'd also like the OK from someone that the license
> stuff is all good to go (I'm not sure who should check licence stuff).
>
> Best,
> Jake
>
> On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 2:39 PM John Ericson
> <john.ericson at obsidian.systems> <john.ericson at obsidian.systems> wrote:
>
>> Seems like there are a few of us interested in this then. I new around
>> here and don't really know how decisions are made, so what's next? Just
>> open a diff with the entire library??
>>
>> John
>> On 04/10/2018 05:33 PM, Jake Ehrlich wrote:
>>
>> Benifits of TBD:
>> 1) It's human readable and diffs on TBDs correspond to changes in the
>> ABI. Diffs can be automatically added to review processes to ensure that
>> changes to the ABI are reviewed. The TBDs also document your precise ABI.
>> 2) The size is smaller which means they can be shipped in an SDK instead
>> of binaries to reduce the size of an SDK
>> 3) Stubs are producible from TBDs (or should be) which means stubs for
>> linking can be produced even if we don't directly support them in LLD. This
>> lets you ship the smaller TBD files in place of larger binaries and still
>> link things without direct linker support (assuming you already ship a
>> toolchain with your SDK or expect your users to have this tool)
>>
>> Since stubs are producible from TBDs I don't really see a downside. I
>> think we need both, I was going to propose a yaml based representation for
>> ELF for the above reasons anyhow.
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 1:14 PM Andrew Kelley via llvm-dev <
>> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 10:11 PM, John Ericson via llvm-dev <
>>> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> > Regardless of any of that, given that TBD files _are_ an integral
>>>> part of the apple platform, supporting them is certainly a necessity in
>>>> order to have a working apple linker. So, if making LLD work for
>>>> Apple/MachO is the justification for adding TBD support to LLVM, that seems
>>>> self-evidently a reasonable thing to do. On the other hand, it looks like
>>>> the LLD mach-o code is unmaintained and nobody seems to be much interested
>>>> in it. And having code for reading TBD files in LLVM seems not terribly
>>>> interesting, unless it is as part of a project to make the LLD MachO linker
>>>> actually functional and supported.
>>>>
>>>> Yes. I hope this can be reason enough. Hobbyists could push for LLD
>>>> support for Mach-O besides Apple, and if LLD is to displace other linkers
>>>> this is a necessary component as you say. Better to upstream now before the
>>>> code diverges than more work later? Conversely if nothing happens, I doubt
>>>> libtapi would be a greater drag on the codebase than the MachO LLD code, so
>>>> whatever cost/benefit analysis exists for keeping that around could also
>>>> apply to this.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Speaking for the Zig project here, our goal is to support
>>> cross-compilation for any target, on any target, without requiring
>>> installation of any target-specific SDK. So, for example, these use cases:
>>>  * on linux, compile & link a binary targeting macos
>>>  * on windows, compile & link a binary targeting macos
>>>
>>> This works today, although it depends on a patch to LLD to fix the
>>> MACH-O linker that is not high enough quality to upstream.
>>>
>>> So we have a vested interest in improving the MACH-O linker, and in fact
>>> a Zig community member has fixed at least one bug in MACH-O LLD:
>>> reviews.llvm.org/D35387
>>>
>>> I don't fully understand how TBD or TAPI works, but I hope that it
>>> results in improvements to the MACH-O linker.
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> LLVM Developers mailing list
>>> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
>>> http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
>>>
>>
>>
>
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