[LLVMdev] LLD: Removing Native file format?

[Davide Italiano]

On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 12:17 PM, Rui Ueyama <ruiu at google.com> wrote:
> I think I bought up this topic before, but I'd like to propose seriously
> removing the Native file format from LLD this time.
>
> 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).
>
> Opinions?

With my FreeBSD hat on:
FreeBSD doesn't talk anything that's not ELF, it's already pretty
time-expensive implementing full support for that to even think about
a different format.
With my LLD hat on:
I've been slowed down from time to time because my patches didn't have
support for YAML or Native format. I personally would be very happy to
not have to worry about yet-another-different-format that at the time
of writing is just incomplete enough to be meaningful.

Thanks,

-- 
Davide

"There are no solved problems; there are only problems that are more
or less solved" -- Henri Poincare