[LLVMdev] LLD: Removing Native file format?

[Simon Atanasyan]

On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 10:17 PM, Rui Ueyama <ruiu at google.com> wrote:
> IIUC, the Native file format was designed to be the fastest on-memory or
> on-disk file format for object files. The problem is that no one is working
> on that. No LLVM tools can produce object files in the Native, thus the
> feature of supporting the format is useless in the linker.
>
> I'm also skeptical about the very idea of defining a new file format since
> existing file formats look to be good enough.
>
> It's maintenance cost is real. I needed to submit a few patches for the
> Native format for global refactoring.
>
> Here I'm proposing removing the Native file format support from LLD unless
> there's a person who's going to take the ownership of the feature and push
> really hard to adopt the file format everywhere (not only in the linker).

I agree that we need to stop supporting the Native file format. Now it
is completely useless and just requires additional effort for
maintenance. If we decide to support it again in the future it will
not too hard to restore it.

-- 
Simon Atanasyan