[llvm-dev] [RFC] [tools] Changing Behavior of LLVM binutils When No File Is Specified

Wed Jun 26 12:09:01 PDT 2019

I think consistency is key and agree that people are likely not using this
anywhere. It's better to go after the ideal at first but we need to be
willing to offer some path forward on these tools if it turns out large
code bases that can't be easily modified use this trick. So I suppose we
should do it but be willing to switch back.

On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 10:15 AM via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>
wrote:

> Like James, Michael suggested, I would prefer the default behavior be
> consistent across tools (either always read from stdin or no default at all
> /give error messages)
>
>
>
> *From:* James Henderson <jh7370.2008 at my.bristol.ac.uk>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, June 26, 2019 2:31 AM
> *To:* Alex Brachet-Mialot <alexbrachetmialot at gmail.com>
> *Cc:* Fāng-ruì Sòng <maskray at google.com>; LLVMDev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>;
> Jordan Rupprecht <rupprecht at google.com>; Chen, Yuanfang <
> Yuanfang.Chen at sony.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [llvm-dev] [RFC] [tools] Changing Behavior of LLVM
> binutils When No File Is Specified
>
>
>
> I agree with others that the a.out behaviour is weird (I've even thought
> this about the linker output being called a.out since I started
> programming, but perhaps that's a different story). The use-case I can
> imagine is something like:
>
>
>
> $ ld.lld test.o
>
> $ llvm-objdump -d
>
>
>
> I.e. using a tool immediately after generating the linker output. However,
> I don't think this is likely actually done by anybody, and I think it's
> probably safe to change the behaviour here. I'd rather be universal across
> the tools (e.g. always read from stdin) than do this frankly. An error
> message about a missing input file might be nice in some cases
> (llvm-readelf, llvm-objdump, llvm-nm), but I think we definitely want to
> support the option of stdin redirection if nothing else but for test
> purposes. If it's complicated to achieve both the error under
> non-redirection cases, and no error in redirection cases then I'd prefer
> the latter.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> James
>
>
>
> On Wed, 26 Jun 2019 at 08:28, Alex Brachet-Mialot via llvm-dev <
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
> Sounds good, I'll work on removing these in favor of defaulting to stdin
> then?
>
>
>
> > I think it would be much friendlier to just print "file or pipe
> expected" and then print the help.
>
> Do you have thoughts on this? I'm not sure there is a clean way to do
> this, the cleanest would be through getFileOrSTDIN(), but I'm not sure all
> of its users want this behavior. I don't think we need it personally, but
> if you think its a good quality of life change to the tools and worth
> working on, I'd be happy to do so.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 1:41 AM Fāng-ruì Sòng <maskray at google.com> wrote:
>
> GNU addr2line, nm, objdump, and size default to a.out when no input file
> is specified.
> Among llvm binary utilities, llvm-nm llvm-objdump llvm-size llvm-dwarfdump
> default to a.out.
>
> I agree with Michael that a.out behavior may not be used by many people.
> If people don't care too much
> about these utilities' compatibility with GNU, deleting the default a.out
> LGTM.
>
> (I am opposed to make more utilities default to a.out)
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 9:02 AM Alex Brachet-Mialot via llvm-dev <
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
> > Does anyone actually use the default to a.out behavior?
>
> This is a good point. What bugs me is continuity across the tools, I agree
> with you that it isn't particularly useful to default to a.out. But we are
> kind of stuck with the weird way that GNU's binutils do things. I am not in
> favor of llvm-objdump defaulting to a.out, but llvm-readelf giving this
> warning message. My guess is that moving away from using a.out by default
> for llvm-objdump, llvm-nm and others whose gnu counter parts do this would
> be more disruptive than my proposal.
>
>
>
> As Jake pointed out we use "-" to describe stdin/stdout, GNU's tools do
> not do this, so I think there is some precedence for us slightly modifying
> behavior when we can reasonably say things will not happen, like the file
> "-" existing.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 8:28 PM Michael Spencer <bigcheesegs at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 4:58 PM Alex Brachet-Mialot via llvm-dev <
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
> Some binutils, nm comes to mind, when to input file is specified will
> default to a.out. Others do not do this and read from stdin by default. The
> rest of this email will be specifically referencing these which read from
> stdin, and not the tools which for various reasons do things differently.
>
>
>
> I propose that we change the behavior of these tools to use a.out when
> appropriate. By appropriate I mean firstly, no input file specified and
> also no stream redirection to stdin. These are the file types of stdin in
> these scenarios:
>
> $ writes-to-stdout | prog # named pipe (fifo)
>
> $ prog < file # regular file
>
> $ prog # reading from tty, character device
>
>
>
> Perhaps if stdin is a named pipe or regular file, then the default
> behavior should be as it always was, to read from stdin, but if stdin is a
> tty then we should use a.out as a default file. This lets these tools act
> the same as their gnu counterparts (when meaningful) but also adds what I
> think is convenient to not have to specify a.out.
>
>
>
> This proposal would look something like this:
>
> $ llvm-strings # not meanigful to read from stdin here, look for a.out
>
> $ llvm-strings < file # use stdin
>
>
>
> I may have got the behavior of stream redirection wrong here, or missed a
> situation when reading from the terminal is useful. I would love some
> feedback.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Alex
>
>
>
>
>
> Does anyone actually use the default to a.out behavior?  I think it would
> be much friendlier to just print "file or pipe expected" and then print the
> help.
>
>
>
> - Michael Spencer
>
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> --
>
> 宋方睿
>
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