[llvm-commits] patch to llvm-link to link in archives

[Pekka Jääskeläinen]

On 08/11/2012 05:44 PM, Rafael Espíndola wrote:
> Is there any particular reason we need our own archive format? The existing
> solutions for doing LTO (linker plugin) and the one being developed (lld)
> work with the native system formats, so IMHO we should drop the llvm
> specific one.

In our case of TCE, we use bitcode archives for whole program optimizations
and simply for the end user convenience (-lsomelib instead of a bunch
of .o files in the compiler cmdline). TCE/TTA is an end-user customizable
standalone target which benefits from this kind of not-fully-target-specific
format at the compiler user level.

http://blog.llvm.org/2010/06/tce-project-co-design-of-application.html

Another project of ours is the Portable OpenCL (pocl) where we use
bitcode archives for the kernel API library to ensure aggressive inlining
of the calls can be done before kernel code generation.

Is there other portable solution that permits these cases nicely and *on
all platforms*? Or, looking from the another aspect: is it really so much code
to maintain that one benefits much from removal given there are users for that
feature?

-- 
Pekka