kbuild: allow architectures to use thin archives instead of ld -r

ld -r is an incremental link used to create built-in.o files in build
subdirectories. It produces relocatable object files containing all
its input files, and these are are then pulled together and relocated
in the final link. Aside from the bloat, this constrains the final
link relocations, which has bitten large powerpc builds with
unresolvable relocations in the final link.

Alan Modra has recommended the kernel use thin archives for linking.
This is an alternative and means that the linker has more information
available to it when it links the kernel.

This patch enables a config option architectures can select, which
causes all built-in.o files to be built as thin archives. built-in.o
files in subdirectories do not get symbol table or index attached,
which improves speed and size. The final link pass creates a
built-in.o archive in the root output directory which includes the
symbol table and index. The linker then uses takes this file to link.

The --whole-archive linker option is required, because the linker now
has visibility to every individual object file, and it will otherwise
just completely avoid including those without external references
(consider a file with EXPORT_SYMBOL or initcall or hardware exceptions
as its only entry points). The traditional built works "by luck" as
built-in.o files are large enough that they're going to get external
references. However this optimisation is unpredictable for the kernel
(due to above external references), ineffective at culling unused, and
costly because the .o files have to be searched for references.
Superior alternatives for link-time culling should be used instead.

Build characteristics for inclink vs thinarc, on a small powerpc64le
pseries VM with a modest .config:

                                  inclink       thinarc
sizes
vmlinux                        15 618 680    15 625 028
sum of all built-in.o          56 091 808     1 054 334
sum excluding root built-in.o                   151 430

find -name built-in.o | xargs rm ; time make vmlinux
real                              22.772s       21.143s
user                              13.280s       13.430s
sys                                4.310s        2.750s

- Final kernel pulled in only about 6K more, which shows how
  ineffective the object file culling is.
- Build performance looks improved due to less pagecache activity.
  On IO constrained systems it could be a bigger win.
- Build size saving is significant.

Side note, the toochain understands archives, so there's some tricks,
$ ar t built-in.o          # list all files you linked with
$ size built-in.o          # and their sizes
$ objdump -d built-in.o    # disassembly (unrelocated) with filenames

Implementation by sfr, minor tweaks by npiggin.

Signed-off-by: Stephen Rothwell <sfr@canb.auug.org.au>
Signed-off-by: Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Michal Marek <mmarek@suse.com>

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/arch/Kconfig b/arch/Kconfig
index bd8056b5b246..6842154813e5 100644
--- a/arch/Kconfig
+++ b/arch/Kconfig
@@ -461,6 +461,12 @@ config CC_STACKPROTECTOR_STRONG
 
 endchoice
 
+config THIN_ARCHIVES
+	bool
+	help
+	  Select this if the architecture wants to use thin archives
+	  instead of ld -r to create the built-in.o files.
+
 config HAVE_CONTEXT_TRACKING
 	bool
 	help