[PATCH] D55550: [LLD][ELF] - Fix the different behavior of the linker script symbols on different platforms.

Wed Apr 17 04:02:08 PDT 2019

peter.smith added a comment.

In D55550#1466482 <https://reviews.llvm.org/D55550#1466482>, @grimar wrote:

> Rui, I am a bit tired of uncertainty in some LLD patches like this one. Could you please either confirm you're not going to accept this, so I'll abandon it. Or if we can proceed with that somehow, please say your word.

Somewhat off-topic; I'm wondering if it is worth revisiting this in a wider context to see if we can find a better way of resolving these compatibility problems. At EuroLLVM there was an interesting discussion in the binutils BOF/Round-table on how important compatibility with GNU tools was. The general consensus was that it was particularly important in projects that had to support both sets of tools and that rewriting inputs to work around limitations in one or other of the tools was a significant headache. The overall philosophy to be taken forward was for GNU compatible option names and output wherever possible, i.e. unless the GNU behaviour was impossible to implement or was crazy anyway. I think that it would be a reasonable to come up with a similar position for LLD, perhaps an RFC to LLVM-DEV might be a way forward.

With the linux kernel attempting to use LLD, first with AArch64 and Arm as part of Android, but there are people trying with x86_64 as well, simultaneously there is an increased interest from embedded systems as LLD is naturally part of the Clang/LLVM binutils.  I think we are so close to be able to support these projects, but we'll have a long tail of small inconsistencies, like this one that we should fix. It would be good to come up with a common process/design to fix these that didn't get stuck on reviews.

CHANGES SINCE LAST ACTION
  https://reviews.llvm.org/D55550/new/

https://reviews.llvm.org/D55550