In cmd_ar_builtin_fixup, the 'T' modifier was added to '$(AR) mPi' to
work around a bug in llvm-ar that caused thin archives to be silently
converted to full archives [1]. Since commit 20c098928356 ("kbuild: Bump
minimum version of LLVM for building the kernel to 15.0.0"), all
supported versions of llvm-ar have this issue fixed, so the 'T' modifier
and comment can be removed.

Link: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/d17c54d17de22d2961a04163f3dbc8e973de89b8 [1]
Signed-off-by: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@kernel.org>

Add distributed ThinLTO build support for the Linux kernel.
This new mode offers several advantages: (1) Increased
flexibility in handling user-specified build options.
(2) Improved user-friendliness for developers. (3) Greater
convenience for integrating with objtool and livepatch.

Note that "distributed" in this context refers to a term
that differentiates in-process ThinLTO builds by invoking
backend compilation through the linker, not necessarily
building in distributed environments.

Distributed ThinLTO is enabled via the
`CONFIG_LTO_CLANG_THIN_DIST` Kconfig option. For example:
 > make LLVM=1 defconfig
 > scripts/config -e LTO_CLANG_THIN_DIST
 > make LLVM=1 oldconfig
 > make LLVM=1 vmlinux -j <..>

The build flow proceeds in four stages:
  1. Perform FE compilation, mirroring the in-process ThinLTO mode.
  2. Thin-link the generated IR files and object files.
  3. Find all IR files and perform BE compilation, using the flags
    stored in the .*.o.cmd files.
  4. Link the BE results to generate the final vmlinux.o.

NOTE: This patch currently implements the build for the main kernel
image (vmlinux) only. Kernel module support is planned for a
subsequent patch.

Tested on the following arch: x86, arm64, loongarch, and
riscv.

The earlier implementation details can be found here:
https://discourse.llvm.org/t/rfc-distributed-thinlto-build-for-kernel/85934

Signed-off-by: Rong Xu <xur@google.com>
Co-developed-by: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>
Tested-by: Piotr Gorski <piotrgorski@cachyos.org>
Tested-by: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@kernel.org>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260529185347.2418373-4-xur@google.com
Signed-off-by: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@kernel.org>

Move the build rule for vmlinux.a to a separate file in preparation
for supporting distributed builds with Clang ThinLTO.

Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>
Tested-by: Rong Xu <xur@google.com>
Tested-by: Piotr Gorski <piotrgorski@cachyos.org>
Tested-by: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Rong Xu <xur@google.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260529185347.2418373-2-xur@google.com
[nathan: Squash in forward fix from Rong around '--thin' to $(AR)
         https://patch.msgid.link/20260529185347.2418373-3-xur@google.com]
Signed-off-by: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@kernel.org>