linux/scripts/mod
Rong Xu 9f2aee8f7d
kbuild: distributed build support for Clang ThinLTO
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>
2026-05-29 13:44:29 -07:00
..
.gitignore .gitignore: prefix local generated files with a slash 2021-05-02 00:43:35 +09:00
devicetable-offsets.c mcb: Add missing modpost build support 2025-12-27 20:48:01 +01:00
empty.c
file2alias.c mcb: Add missing modpost build support 2025-12-27 20:48:01 +01:00
Makefile Makefile: remove redundant tool coverage variables 2024-05-14 23:35:48 +09:00
mk_elfconfig.c modpost: detect endianness on run-time 2024-09-01 20:33:32 +09:00
modpost.c kbuild: distributed build support for Clang ThinLTO 2026-05-29 13:44:29 -07:00
modpost.h modpost: Create modalias for builtin modules 2025-09-24 09:10:45 -07:00
sumversion.c modpost: use strstarts() to clean up parse_source_files() 2025-03-15 21:16:22 +09:00
symsearch.c modpost: replace the use of NOFAIL() with xmalloc() etc. 2024-09-01 20:34:48 +09:00