[llvm-dev] Your help needed: List of LLVM Open Projects 2017

[Ed Maste via llvm-dev]

On 17 January 2017 at 02:02, Rui Ueyama <ruiu at google.com> wrote:
>
> I like that idea. FreeBSD is using a very old version of ld.bfd, so on Linux
> systems we may be able to find programs that use recent linker features
> which LLD does not support. This may sound like an ambitious goal, but I
> want make Linux distributions to use LLD as default linker, so it needs to
> be able to link entire Linux distributions.

On FreeBSD the very old ld.bfd is used for linking the base system and
is the default for the ports collection, but ports that require
features from newer versions depend on the binutils package. Currently
they'll link with ld.bfd 2.27. I believe there are on the order of 50
packages with a build dependency on binutils. We should be able to
hack Poudriere to try linking these with lld instead of a contemporary
ld.bfd.

That said, I agree it's incredibly valuable to have Linux distros and
the Linux kernel test linking with LLD.

> As to porting LLD to other architectures, you can use emulators like bochs,
> can't you? You don't even need any emulator for x86 32-bit.

QEMU recipes exist for most architectures of interest to FreeBSD, so
there's a straightforward testing approach. We also have fast
development hardware for some non-x86 architectures, like AArch64.