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Commit dc5723b0 authored by Sami Tolvanen's avatar Sami Tolvanen Committed by Kees Cook
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kbuild: add support for Clang LTO

This change adds build system support for Clang's Link Time
Optimization (LTO). With -flto, instead of ELF object files, Clang
produces LLVM bitcode, which is compiled into native code at link
time, allowing the final binary to be optimized globally. For more
details, see:

  https://llvm.org/docs/LinkTimeOptimization.html

The Kconfig option CONFIG_LTO_CLANG is implemented as a choice,
which defaults to LTO being disabled. To use LTO, the architecture
must select ARCH_SUPPORTS_LTO_CLANG and support:

  - compiling with Clang,
  - compiling all assembly code with Clang's integrated assembler,
  - and linking with LLD.

While using CONFIG_LTO_CLANG_FULL results in the best runtime
performance, the compilation is not scalable in time or
memory. CONFIG_LTO_CLANG_THIN enables ThinLTO, which allows
parallel optimization and faster incremental builds. ThinLTO is
used by default if the architecture also selects
ARCH_SUPPORTS_LTO_CLANG_THIN:

  https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ThinLTO.html



To enable LTO, LLVM tools must be used to handle bitcode files, by
passing LLVM=1 and LLVM_IAS=1 options to make:

  $ make LLVM=1 LLVM_IAS=1 defconfig
  $ scripts/config -e LTO_CLANG_THIN
  $ make LLVM=1 LLVM_IAS=1

To prepare for LTO support with other compilers, common parts are
gated behind the CONFIG_LTO option, and LTO can be disabled for
specific files by filtering out CC_FLAGS_LTO.

Signed-off-by: default avatarSami Tolvanen <samitolvanen@google.com>
Reviewed-by: default avatarKees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Signed-off-by: default avatarKees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20201211184633.3213045-3-samitolvanen@google.com
parent 3b15cdc1
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