rust/compiler/rustc_target
bors 7106800e16 Auto merge of #123656 - lqd:linker-features, r=petrochenkov
Linker flavors next steps: linker features

This is my understanding of the first step towards `@petrochenkov's` vision for the future of linker flavors, described in https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/119906#issuecomment-1895693162 and the discussion that followed.

To summarize: having `Cc` and `Lld` embedded in linker flavors creates tension about naming, and a combinatorial explosion of flavors for each new linker feature we'd want to use. Linker features are an extension mechanism that is complementary to principal flavors, with benefits described in #119906.

The most immediate use of this flag would be to turn self-contained linking on and off via features instead of flavors. For example, `-Clinker-features=+/-lld` would toggle using lld instead of selecting a precise flavor, and would be "generic" and work cross-platform (whereas linker flavors are currently more tied to targets). Under this scheme, MCP510 is expected to be `-Clink-self-contained=+linker -Zlinker-features=+lld -Zunstable-options` (though for the time being, the original flags using lld-cc flavors still work).

I purposefully didn't add or document CLI support for `+/-cc`, as it would be a noop right now. I only expect that we'd initially want to stabilize `+/-lld` to begin with.

r? `@petrochenkov`

You had requested that minimal churn would be done to the 230 target specs and this does none yet: the linker features are inferred from the flavor since they're currently isomorphic. We of course expect this to change sooner rather than later.

In the future, we can allow targets to define linker features independently from their flavor, and remove the cc and lld components from the flavors to use the features instead, this actually doesn't need to block stabilization, as we discussed.

(Best reviewed per commit)
2024-04-13 11:10:01 +00:00
..
src Auto merge of #123656 - lqd:linker-features, r=petrochenkov 2024-04-13 11:10:01 +00:00
Cargo.toml Update to bitflags 2 in the compiler 2023-12-30 18:17:28 +01:00
README.md

rustc_target contains some very low-level details that are specific to different compilation targets and so forth.

For more information about how rustc works, see the rustc dev guide.