Re: [PATCH 00/22] add support for Clang LTO

Sami Tolvanen
2020-06-24T21:30:22Z

On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 11:15:40PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 01:31:38PM -0700, Sami Tolvanen wrote:
> > This patch series adds support for building x86_64 and arm64 kernels
> > with Clang's Link Time Optimization (LTO).
> >
> > In addition to performance, the primary motivation for LTO is to allow
> > Clang's Control-Flow Integrity (CFI) to be used in the kernel. Google's
> > Pixel devices have shipped with LTO+CFI kernels since 2018.
> >
> > Most of the patches are build system changes for handling LLVM bitcode,
> > which Clang produces with LTO instead of ELF object files, postponing
> > ELF processing until a later stage, and ensuring initcall ordering.
> >
> > Note that first objtool patch in the series is already in linux-next,
> > but as it's needed with LTO, I'm including it also here to make testing
> > easier.
>
> I'm very sad that yet again, memory ordering isn't addressed. LTO vastly
> increases the range of the optimizer to wreck things.

I believe Will has some thoughts about this, and patches, but I'll let
him talk about it.

Sami