[llvm-dev] [GSOC 2018] GNU Binutils replacement

[Jake Ehrlich via llvm-dev]

Hi Sebastiaan,

I'm not the creator of the this GSOC project but I might be able to help.
I'm the author of llvm-objcopy, and the soon to be creator of the symlink
llvm-strip to llvm-objcopy (which currently doesn't exist). The reason
llvm-objcopy and llvm-strip don't have documentation pages is because I
haven't written them yet; I'll get on that!

1. The goal is to work towards extending the existing interfaces so that
the existing tools can be used as drop in replacements in more projects.
Most tools that have GNU binutils equivalents have some GNU binutil CLI
compatible interface. I think llvm-as could probably be extended slowly but
surely to be a better more practical replacement for GNU as.

2. What do you mean? It's already cli compatible.

3. They exist and are still being worked on! I've just been lazy about
documentation. llvm-objcopy is actually the least mature GNU binutils
replacement and could use lots more work.

4. I'm not familiar enough with what people commonly use in bigger builds
to say for sure what tools might be missing. In my team's experience
llvm-objcopy was the last missing piece which is why I wrote it. If you
find some projects that use a tool that is 100% missing, You could work on
implementing a small subset of features needed for one of those projects. I
think it's more likely that existing tools will need to be extended however.

5. Well I'm biased of course and would say llvm-objcopy. A better more
unbiased answer would be to find a project that currently uses GNU
binutils, build it using llvm instead of binutils, and see what
fails/breaks. That way you don't go off and arbitrarily extend tool X with
obscure feature Y that hardly anyone actually uses.

I think Eric Christopher is the proposal and confirmed mentor and might
have more to say.

Best,
Jake

On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 11:15 AM Sebastiaan Peters via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> My name is Sebastiaan Peters, an undergrad student from The Netherlands.
>
> The project for creating drop-in replacements for GNU Binutils peaked my
> interest. It would make my day (or my summer) being able to contribute to
> such a project.
>
> Since I have no experience with llvm besides some basic usage of clang,
> the first thing I tried was to find out what llvm tools are out there.
> However the more I research the more questions I got.
> I would very grateful if somebody could answer some of the following
> questions:
>
> 1. Does this project apply to all llvm tools, or just those that have
> intersecting functionality with the existing GNU Binutils?
> For instance the llvm-assembler still provides the same functionality, but
> does will most likely not be a replacement for gnu-as considering the large
> amount of features it lacks (not being able to accept or target most
> architectures).
>
> 2. LLD already exists as a drop-in replacement for the GNU linker for
> compilers[0], would it be desirable if an cli wrapper would be made for
> this?
>
> 3. What happened to tools like llvm-objcopy and llvm-strip?
> Documentation is hard to find and are not included in the llvm tools
> documentation page[0].
>
> 4. In the case of missing functionality between 2 tools, Is it the goal to
> patch up what is missing or to go on to the next tool?
>
> 5. Is there a list of preferred tools that should be prioritized?
>
> Sorry if there is said anything that is incorrect, trying to get a clear
> picture of the entire project was quite overwhelming.
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> Sebastiaan Peters
>
> [0] https://lld.llvm.org/
> [1] https://llvm.org/docs/CommandGuide/index.html
>
>
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