[llvm-dev] [lld] Flavour option purpose

Michael Spencer via llvm-dev
Wed, 01 Nov 2017 22:47:52 -0000

On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 2:06 PM, N via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at
lists.llvm.org>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> According to lld/docs/Driver.rst, Flavor command line option determines
> the style of lld command-line interface when invoked.
>
> However, it looks like this option also determines the set of supported
> targets we are linking for. For example, lld -flavor gnu
> cannot link mach-o binaries, and could not link PE binaries either (well,
> not until rL312926).
>
> Is this really intended by the design of lld? It looks the flavours are
> merely legacy compatibility shims, but then why is there no
> universal lld driver that is able to link binary for any platform using a
> unified CLI?
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The original design of lld had a single driver for all 3 formats that
compatibility drivers would target. It was eventually determined that this
didn't work in practice as the formats are each so different, so this was
dropped and was not carried over to the new COFF and ELF lld designs.

- Michael Spencer
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