• Nathan Chancellor's avatar
    kbuild: Make $(LLVM) more flexible · e9c28192
    Nathan Chancellor authored
    The LLVM make variable allows a developer to quickly switch between the
    GNU and LLVM tools. However, it does not handle versioned binaries, such
    as the ones shipped by Debian, as LLVM=1 just defines the tool variables
    with the unversioned binaries.
    
    There was some discussion during the review of the patch that introduces
    LLVM=1 around versioned binaries, ultimately coming to the conclusion
    that developers can just add the folder that contains the unversioned
    binaries to their PATH, as Debian's versioned suffixed binaries are
    really just symlinks to the unversioned binaries in /usr/lib/llvm-#/bin:
    
    $ realpath /usr/bin/clang-14
    /usr/lib/llvm-14/bin/clang
    
    $ PATH=/usr/lib/llvm-14/bin:$PATH make ... LLVM=1
    
    However, that can be cumbersome to developers who are constantly testing
    series with different toolchains and versions. It is simple enough to
    support these versioned binaries directly in the Kbuild system by
    allowing the developer to specify the version suffix with LLVM=, which
    is shorter than the above suggestion:
    
    $ make ... LLVM=-14
    
    It does not change the meaning of LLVM=1 (which will continue to use
    unversioned binaries) and it does not add too much additional complexity
    to the existing $(LLVM) code, while allowing developers to quickly test
    their series with different versions of the whole LLVM suite of tools.
    
    Some developers may build LLVM from source but not add the binaries to
    their PATH, as they may not want to use that toolchain systemwide.
    Support those developers by allowing them to supply the directory that
    the LLVM tools are available in, as it is no more complex to support
    than the version suffix change above.
    
    $ make ... LLVM=/path/to/llvm/
    
    Update and reorder the documentation to reflect these new additions.
    At the same time, notate that LLVM=0 is not the same as just omitting it
    altogether, which has confused people in the past.
    
    Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200317215515.226917-1-ndesaulniers@google.com/
    Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20220224151322.072632223@infradead.org/Suggested-by: default avatarMasahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>
    Suggested-by: default avatarPeter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarNathan Chancellor <nathan@kernel.org>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarKees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarNick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarMasahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>
    e9c28192
lib.mk 5.1 KB