On Sun, May 8, 2022 at 12:10 PM Masahiro Yamada [off-list ref] wrote:

When CONFIG_LTO_CLANG=y, additional intermediate *.prelink.o is created
for each module. Also, objtool is postponed until LLVM bitcode is
converted to ELF.

CONFIG_X86_KERNEL_IBT works in a similar way to postpone objtool until
objects are merged together.

This commit stops generating *.prelink.o, so the build flow will look
the same with/without LTO.

The following figures show how the LTO build currently works, and
how this commit is changing it.

Current build flow
==================

 [1] single-object module

                                      $(LD)
           $(CC)                     +objtool              $(LD)
    foo.c --------------------> foo.o -----> foo.prelink.o -----> foo.ko
                           (LLVM bitcode)        (ELF)       |
                                                             |
                                                 foo.mod.o --/

 [2] multi-object module
                                      $(LD)
           $(CC)         $(AR)       +objtool               $(LD)
    foo1.c -----> foo1.o -----> foo.o -----> foo.prelink.o -----> foo.ko
                           |  (archive)          (ELF)       |
    foo2.c -----> foo2.o --/                                 |
                (LLVM bitcode)                   foo.mod.o --/

  One confusion is foo.o in multi-object module is an archive despite of
  its suffix.

New build flow
==============

 [1] single-object module

  Since there is only one object, we do not need to have the LLVM
  bitcode stage. Use $(CC)+$(LD) to generate an ELF object in one
  build rule. When LTO is disabled, $(LD) is unneeded because $(CC)
  produces an ELF object.

           $(CC)+$(LD)+objtool             $(LD)
    foo.c ------------------------> foo.o -------> foo.ko
                                    (ELF)    |
                                             |
                                 foo.mod.o --/

 [2] multi-object module

  Previously, $(AR) was used to combine LLVM bitcode into an archive,
  but there was no technical reason to do so.
  This commit just uses $(LD) to combine and convert them into a single
  ELF object.

                            $(LD)
            $(CC)          +objtool        $(LD)
    foo1.c -------> foo1.o -------> foo.o -------> foo.ko
                              |     (ELF)    |
    foo2.c -------> foo2.o ---/              |
                (LLVM bitcode)   foo.mod.o --/

Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Nicolas Schier <redacted>
Tested-by: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@kernel.org>

Looks good, thanks for cleaning this up!

Reviewed-by: Sami Tolvanen <samitolvanen@google.com>

Sami