Re: [PATCH v7 00/17] Add support for Clang LTO

From: Masahiro Yamada
Date: Tue Dec 01 2020 - 21:44:19 EST


On Wed, Dec 2, 2020 at 2:31 AM Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 12:01:31PM +0000, Will Deacon wrote:
> > Hi Sami,
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 02:07:14PM -0800, Sami Tolvanen wrote:
> > > This patch series adds support for building the kernel 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 has shipped millions of Pixel devices
> > > running three major kernel versions with LTO+CFI 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 v7 brings back arm64 support as Will has now staged the
> > > prerequisite memory ordering patches [1], and drops x86_64 while we work
> > > on fixing the remaining objtool warnings [2].
> >
> > Sounds like you're going to post a v8, but that's the plan for merging
> > that? The arm64 parts look pretty good to me now.
>
> I haven't seen Masahiro comment on this in a while, so given the review
> history and its use (for years now) in Android, I will carry v8 (assuming
> all is fine with it) it in -next unless there are objections.


What I dislike about this implementation is
it cannot drop any unreachable function/data.
(and it is completely different from GCC LTO)

This is not real LTO.




> --
> Kees Cook
>
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--
Best Regards
Masahiro Yamada