[PATCH] D96613: [lld] Add options to trace all symbols and to trace all symbols originated from a file

[Shoaib Meenai via Phabricator via llvm-commits]

smeenai added a comment.

In D96613#2590870 <https://reviews.llvm.org/D96613#2590870>, @MaskRay wrote:

> https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=27407
> I think the functionality can be straightforwardly emulated. For example, `llvm-nm -Du` dumps undefined symbols in `.dynsym`.
>
> `% ld.lld @response.txt $(llvm-nm -Du usr/lib64/libc.so.6 | awk '{print "-y"substr($0,20)}')`
>
> This even works with versioned symbols while the patch doesn't. You can tweak `-u`: e.g. `-U` dumps defined symbols (`-U` is not in `nm`).
> This is the flexibility provided by composing tools, which will be a bit inconvenient to implement in code.
>
> The patch uses `this->file`, however, the value may change if the symbol gets resolved to other files. In the cases I can conceive we want the trace of the full lifetime of a symbol, not only when it is bound to a specific file.

In general, while there's a lot of value in being able to compose tools, I strongly disagree that it's an adequate replacement for having functionality directly built into a tool:

- You have to think about how to construct the appropriate pipeline, and in practice, you're going to have to re-remember how to construct that pipeline every single time you want to use it (vs. just remembering a simple command like `--trace-all-symbols`). (I know you can use aliases/shell functions/etc., but it's still a lot of overhead.)
- If you want to integrate the functionality in your build system (e.g. you're trying to generate an aggregated report for all the libraries you build), a pipeline is much harder to integrate into your build system, vs. just adding an argument.
- You have to worry about platform differences; e.g., lots of Linux utilities have different arguments or behaviors than their BSD (and therefore macOS) equivalents, and Windows doesn't have these utilities at all.


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