[PATCH v7 5/8] kbuild: make built-in.a rule robust against too long argument error

[Masahiro Yamada]

Kbuild runs at the top of objtree instead of changing the working
directory to subdirectories. I think this design is nice overall but
some commands have a scalability issue.

The build command of built-in.a is one of them whose length scales with:

    O(D * N)

Here, D is the length of the directory path (i.e. $(obj)/ prefix),
N is the number of objects in the Makefile, O() is the big O notation.

The deeper directory the Makefile directory is located, the more easily
it will hit the too long argument error.

We can make it better. Trim the $(obj)/ by Make's builtin function, and
restore it by a shell command (sed).

With this, the command length scales with:

    O(D + N)

In-tree modules still have some room to the limit (ARG_MAX=2097152),
but this is more future-proof for big modules in a deep directory.

For example, you can build i915 as builtin (CONFIG_DRM_I915=y) and
compare drivers/gpu/drm/i915/.built-in.a.cmd with/without this commit.

Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@xxxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Nicolas Schier <nicolas@xxxxxxxxx>
Tested-by: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@xxxxxxxxxx>
Tested-by: Sedat Dilek <sedat.dilek@xxxxxxxxx> # LLVM-14 (x86-64)
---

Changes in v7:
  - Add comment to the code

Changes in v2:
  - New patch

 scripts/Makefile.build | 7 ++++++-
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/scripts/Makefile.build b/scripts/Makefile.build
index 0135b4e7f78b..014ebee70fd6 100644
--- a/scripts/Makefile.build
+++ b/scripts/Makefile.build
@@ -376,9 +376,14 @@ $(subdir-modorder): $(obj)/%/modules.order: $(obj)/% ;
 #
 # Rule to compile a set of .o files into one .a file (without symbol table)
 #
+# To make this rule robust against "Argument list too long" error,
+# remove $(obj)/ prefix, and restore it by a shell command.
 
 quiet_cmd_ar_builtin = AR      $@
-      cmd_ar_builtin = rm -f $@; $(AR) cDPrST $@ $(real-prereqs)
+      cmd_ar_builtin = rm -f $@; \
+		echo $(patsubst $(obj)/%,%,$(real-prereqs)) | \
+		sed -E 's:([^ ]+):$(obj)/\1:g' | \
+		xargs $(AR) cDPrST $@
 
 $(obj)/built-in.a: $(real-obj-y) FORCE
 	$(call if_changed,ar_builtin)
-- 
2.32.0