Summary:
This adds support for embedding bitcode in a binary during LTO. The libLTO gains supports the `-lto-embed-bitcode` flag. The option allows users of the LTO library to embed a bitcode section. For example, LLD can pass the option via `ld.lld -mllvm=-lto-embed-bitcode`.
This feature allows doing something comparable to `clang -c -fembed-bitcode`, but on the (LTO) linker level. Having bitcode alongside native code has many use-cases. To give an example, the MacOS linker can create a `-bitcode_bundle` section containing bitcode. Also, having this feature built into LLVM is an alternative to 3rd party tools such as [[ https://github.com/travitch/whole-program-llvm | wllvm ]] or [[ https://github.com/SRI-CSL/gllvm | gllvm ]]. As with these tools, this feature simplifies creating "whole-program" llvm bitcode files, but in contrast to wllvm/gllvm it does not rely on a specific llvm frontend/driver.
Patch by Josef Eisl <josef.eisl@oracle.com>
Reviewers: #llvm, #clang, rsmith, pcc, alexshap, tejohnson
Reviewed By: tejohnson
Subscribers: tejohnson, mehdi_amini, inglorion, hiraditya, aheejin, steven_wu, dexonsmith, dang, cfe-commits, llvm-commits, #llvm, #clang
Tags: #clang, #llvm
Differential Revision: https://reviews.llvm.org/D68213
Teresa Johnson