[llvm-dev] [GSOC 2018] GNU Binutils replacement

[Sebastiaan Peters via llvm-dev]

Hello everyone,

My name is Sebastiaan Peters, an undergrad student from The Netherlands.

The project for creating drop-in replacements for GNU Binutils peaked my interest. It would make my day (or my summer) being able to contribute to such a project.

Since I have no experience with llvm besides some basic usage of clang, the first thing I tried was to find out what llvm tools are out there. 
However the more I research the more questions I got.
I would very grateful if somebody could answer some of the following questions: 

1. Does this project apply to all llvm tools, or just those that have intersecting functionality with the existing GNU Binutils?
For instance the llvm-assembler still provides the same functionality, but does will most likely not be a replacement for gnu-as considering the large amount of features it lacks (not being able to accept or target most architectures).

2. LLD already exists as a drop-in replacement for the GNU linker for compilers[0], would it be desirable if an cli wrapper would be made for this?

3. What happened to tools like llvm-objcopy and llvm-strip? 
Documentation is hard to find and are not included in the llvm tools documentation page[0].

4. In the case of missing functionality between 2 tools, Is it the goal to patch up what is missing or to go on to the next tool?

5. Is there a list of preferred tools that should be prioritized?

Sorry if there is said anything that is incorrect, trying to get a clear picture of the entire project was quite overwhelming.

Kind Regards,

Sebastiaan Peters

[0] https://lld.llvm.org/
[1] https://llvm.org/docs/CommandGuide/index.html