[LLVMdev] LLD improvement plan

[Chris Lattner]

> On May 6, 2015, at 2:18 PM, Rui Ueyama <ruiu at google.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm sorry if my suggestion gave an impression that I disregard the Mach-O port of the LLD linker. I do care about Mach-O. I do not plan to break or remove any functionality from the current Mach-O port of the LLD. I don't propose to remove the atom model from the linker as long as it seems to be a good fit for the port (and looks like it is).
> 
> As to the proposal to have two different linkers, I'd think that that's not really a counter-proposal, as it's similar to what I'm proposing.
> 
> Maybe the view of "future file formats vs the existing formats" (or "experimental platform vs. practical tool") is not right to get the difference between the atom model and the section model, since the Mach-O file an existing file format which we'd want to keep to be on the atom model. I think we want both even for the existing formats.
> 
> My proposal can be read as suggesting we split the LLD linker into two major parts, the atom model-based and the section model-based, while keeping the two under the same project and repository. I still think that we can share code between the two, especially for the LTO, which is I prefer to have the two under the same repository.

That approach makes sense to me personally.

-Chris