Right now whenever an rlib file is linked against, all of the metadata from the
rlib is pulled in to the final staticlib or binary. The reason for this is that
the metadata is currently stored in a section of the object file. Note that this
is intentional for dynamic libraries in order to distribute metadata bundled
with static libraries.
This commit alters the situation for rlib libraries to instead store the
metadata in a separate file in the archive. In doing so, when the archive is
passed to the linker, none of the metadata will get pulled into the result
executable. Furthermore, the metadata file is skipped when assembling rlibs into
an archive.
The snag in this implementation comes with multiple output formats. When
generating a dylib, the metadata needs to be in the object file, but when
generating an rlib this needs to be separate. In order to accomplish this, the
metadata variable is inserted into an entirely separate LLVM Module which is
then codegen'd into a different location (foo.metadata.o). This is then linked
into dynamic libraries and silently ignored for rlib files.
While changing how metadata is inserted into archives, I have also stopped
compressing metadata when inserted into rlib files. We have wanted to stop
compressing metadata, but the sections it creates in object file sections are
apparently too large. Thankfully if it's just an arbitrary file it doesn't
matter how large it is.
I have seen massive reductions in executable sizes, as well as staticlib output
sizes (to confirm that this is all working).
This reverts commit c54427ddfb.
Leave the #[ignores] in that were added to rustpkg tests.
Conflicts:
src/librustc/driver/driver.rs
src/librustc/metadata/creader.rs
This commit implements the support necessary for generating both intermediate
and result static rust libraries. This is an implementation of my thoughts in
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rust-dev/2013-November/006686.html.
When compiling a library, we still retain the "lib" option, although now there
are "rlib", "staticlib", and "dylib" as options for crate_type (and these are
stackable). The idea of "lib" is to generate the "compiler default" instead of
having too choose (although all are interchangeable). For now I have left the
"complier default" to be a dynamic library for size reasons.
Of the rust libraries, lib{std,extra,rustuv} will bootstrap with an
rlib/dylib pair, but lib{rustc,syntax,rustdoc,rustpkg} will only be built as a
dynamic object. I chose this for size reasons, but also because you're probably
not going to be embedding the rustc compiler anywhere any time soon.
Other than the options outlined above, there are a few defaults/preferences that
are now opinionated in the compiler:
* If both a .dylib and .rlib are found for a rust library, the compiler will
prefer the .rlib variant. This is overridable via the -Z prefer-dynamic option
* If generating a "lib", the compiler will generate a dynamic library. This is
overridable by explicitly saying what flavor you'd like (rlib, staticlib,
dylib).
* If no options are passed to the command line, and no crate_type is found in
the destination crate, then an executable is generated
With this change, you can successfully build a rust program with 0 dynamic
dependencies on rust libraries. There is still a dynamic dependency on
librustrt, but I plan on removing that in a subsequent commit.
This change includes no tests just yet. Our current testing
infrastructure/harnesses aren't very amenable to doing flavorful things with
linking, so I'm planning on adding a new mode of testing which I believe belongs
as a separate commit.
Closes#552
