[LLVMdev] LLD improvement plan

[Chris Lattner]

On May 1, 2015, at 12:31 PM, Rui Ueyama <ruiu at google.com> wrote:
> Proposal
> Re-architect the linker based on the section model where it’s appropriate.
> Stop simulating different linker semantics using the Unix model. Instead, directly implement the native behavior.

Preface: I have never personally contributed code to LLD, so don’t take anything I’m about to say too seriously.  This is not a mandate or anything, just an observation/idea.


I think that there is an alternative solution to these exact same problems.  What you’ve identified here is that there are two camps of people working on LLD, and they have conflicting goals:

- Camp A: LLD is infrastructure for the next generation of awesome linking and toolchain features, it should take advantage of how compilers work to offer new features, performance, etc without deep concern for compatibility.

- Camp B: LLD is a drop in replacement system linker (notably for COFF and ELF systems), which is best of breed and with no compromises w.r.t. that goal.


I think the problem here is that these lead to natural and inescapable tensions, and Alex summarized how Camp B has been steering LLD away from what Camp A people want.  This isn’t bad in and of itself, because what Camp B wants is clearly and unarguably good for LLVM.  However, it is also not sufficient, and while innovation in the linker space (e.g. a new “native” object file format generated directly from compiler structures) may or may not actually “work” or be “worth it”, we won’t know unless we try, and that won’t fulfill its promise if there are compromises to Camp B.

So here’s my counterproposal: two different linkers.

Lets stop thinking about lld as one linker, and instead think of it is two different ones.  We’ll build a Camp B linker which is the best of breed section based linker.  It will support linker scripts and do everything better than any existing section based linker.  The first step of this is to do what Rui proposes and rip atoms out of the model.

We will also build a no-holds-barred awesome atom based linker that takes advantage of everything it can from LLVM’s architecture to enable innovative new tools without worrying too much about backwards compatibility.

These two linkers should share whatever code makes sense, but also shouldn’t try to share code that doesn’t make sense.  The split between the semantic model of sections vs atoms seems like a very natural one to me.

One question is: does it make sense for these to live in the same lld subproject, or be split into two different subprojects?  I think the answer to that question is driven from whether there is shared code common between the two linkers that doesn’t make sense to sink down to the llvm subproject itself.

What do you think?

-Chris

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