[cfe-dev] [LLVMdev] RFC: How should Clang/LLVM runtime libraries be installed and found during link steps?

[Peter Collingbourne]

On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 09:18:14AM +0100, Ruben Van Boxem wrote:
> > Should runtime libraries be installed as archives? .o files? .so files?
> > (gasp) bitcode? Some mixture of these? What mixture, and how do we decide?
> > I lean  toward .o files as bitcode where the linker supports it, normal .o
> > files where it supports those, and .a files only as a fallback. Not very
> > confident of these preferences though.
> >
> 
> libraries -> .a/so files... They're target specific anyways, why even
> consider bitcode?

For some languages (e.g. OpenCL), the runtime library is a set of
functions which must be inlined, and therefore must be stored as
bitcode.  More generally, storing libraries as bitcode would expose
inlining/LTO opportunities.

Thanks,
-- 
Peter