[PATCH] D74169: [WIP][LLD][ELF][DebugInfo] Remove obsolete debug info.

[Alexey Lapshin via Phabricator via llvm-commits]

avl added a comment.

> Not so much reason to support type units ("-fdebug-types-section/type units/.debug_types section/multiple .debug_info sections" all essentially describe the same thing). Since type units add object size overhead to reduced linked size in the face of a DWARF-agnostic/ignorant linker. If you have a DWARF aware linker, you'd probably avoid using type units so you could have smaller object files too.

It seems to me type units are useful for the current scheme. They increase the size of type reference(8 bytes vs 4 bytes) and introduce type unit header, but they avoid duplication. All references inside the object file point to the single type description - thus, object files have only one type's description instead of multiple copies. The effect of de-duplication is higher than the introduced increase.

DWARF aware linker does not reduce the size of object files. It reduces the size of binary, whereas type units allow decreasing object file.

I think DWARF aware linker could help to get even more size reduction. If instead of type units, there would be another structure - something like "bag of DWARF"(bag of types). You mentioned this idea in http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2019-September/135262.html.  "bag of DWARF" would allow to have single type description in object file for type and to have 4-bytes references. DWARF aware linker could merge "bag of DWARF" from various object files. (similar to the current process when linker merges comdat sections. But joining "bag of DWARF" is a more complicated process than selecting one section from the set of comdat sections)

> Does it support multipe compile units in a single section in an object file (ala LTO/ThinLTO)?

it should but I did not check it yet. I would check and post results here.


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https://reviews.llvm.org/D74169