[cfe-dev] too slow to build clang

[Rick Mann]

On Jan 19, 2009, at 11:47:25, David Chisnall wrote:

> On 19 Jan 2009, at 19:40, Rick Mann wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jan 19, 2009, at 10:50:16, Eric Christopher wrote:
>>
>>> Only on linux at this point.
>>
>>
>> In more seriousness, what would it take to run gold on Mac OS X?
>
> Major and invasive changes to the OS X loader.  Gold is fast because  
> it only supports one binary format, ELF, while the older GNU ld  
> supports a.out, ELF and COFF.  OS X uses Mach-O, and is not  
> supported by either.
>
> I don't know how Gold compares in terms of performance to the NeXT /  
> Apple linker, but I'd be surprised if there was a big difference in  
> performance since the Apple linker hasn't inherited the same level  
> of cruft as the GNU linker from having multiple binary formats added  
> over time.
>
> Porting Gold to *BSD should be relatively easy, but no one appears  
> to have both the skill and the motivation to do so.

Ah. I was sort-of assuming part of the bottleneck (on OS X) was gnu  
ld. I didn't really realize that Mac OS X had its own linker. At my  
day job, I suffer through horrible long gnu ld stages, so it's on my  
mind.

-- 
Rick