Symbols exported by DLLs can be imported not by name but by
small number or ordinal. Usually, symbols have both ordinals
and names, and in that case ordinals are called "hints" and
used by the loader as hints.
However, symbols can have only ordinals. They are called
import-by-ordinal symbols. You need to manage ordinals by hand
so that they will never change if you choose to use the feature.
But it's supposed to make dynamic linking faster because
it needs no string comparison. Not sure if that claim still
stands in year 2015, though. Anyways, the feature exists,
and this patch implements that.
llvm-svn: 238780
This is an initial patch for a section-based COFF linker.
The patch has 2300 lines of code including comments and blank lines.
Before diving into details, you want to start from reading README
because it should give you an overview of the design.
All important things are written in the README file, so I write
summary here.
- The linker is already able to self-link on Windows.
- It's significantly faster than the existing implementation.
The existing one takes 5 seconds to link LLD on my machine,
while the new one only takes 1.2 seconds, even though the new
one is not multi-threaded yet. (And a proof-of-concept multi-
threaded version was able to link it in 0.5 seconds.)
- It uses much less memory (250MB vs. 2GB virtual memory space
to self-host).
- IMHO the new code is much simpler and easier to read than
the existing PE/COFF port.
http://reviews.llvm.org/D10036
llvm-svn: 238458
Rui Ueyama