[llvm-dev] Removing pointers from MCInstrDesc for less relocations

[Nicolai Hähnle via llvm-dev]

Hi everybody,

I noticed today that my libLLVM-3.9svn.so has a ~1.7MB .data.rel.ro 
segment - i.e. data that needs to be touched by the dynamic linker even 
though it's ultimately read-only, and data that cannot be shared between 
multiple processes using LLVM.

It turns out that a solid ~1.3MB of that data is in the tablegen'd 
MCInstrDesc tables - there a pointers for ImplicitUses, ImplicitDefs, 
and OpInfo that need to be relocated.

This can be fixed of course by having target-global arrays for those 
structures referenced by MCInstrInfo (and hence TargetInstrInfo), and 
only storing offsets into those global arrays in MCInstrDesc.

The downside is that several relevant accessors need to be augmented 
with MCInstrInfo parameters, but in the long run it seems worth it to me.

Any objections or suggestions? Is this something that people can agree 
on, i.e. do patches going in this direction have a good chance of being 
accepted?

Cheers,
Nicolai