[LLVMdev] Selectively Disable Inlining for Functions

[Chris Lattner]

On Tue, 7 Mar 2006, Chris Lattner wrote:
> As a specific proposal to provide "never inline" in a way that is low-impact 
> on LLVM and solves #3, I suggest that we add a new llvm.neverinline global 
> array variable (like the llvm.used global).  This global would point to all 
> neverinline functions, and would have appending linkage (like llvm.used).

To be more explicit, here's an example of what attribute(used) does. 
Given:

int X __attribute__((used));
int Y;
void foo() __attribute__((used));
void foo() {}
void bar() {}

The C front-end emits this global:

; Attribute used list
%llvm.used = appending global [2 x sbyte*] [
         sbyte* cast (int* %X to sbyte*),
         sbyte* cast (void ()* %foo to sbyte*)
     ]

"llvm.used" is never internalized, so it never goes away.  Its presense 
automatically disables IPO and prevents the functions from being removed 
as described earlier.

-Chris

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