187719 - Investigate using relocatable object files for intermediate objects instead of 'ar'

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox Build System :: General, defect)

Description

[Brian Ryner (not reading)]

Preliminary results on Linux show that for a debug build, linking a combined
layout and content library (see bug 106161), we can cut the maximum process size
of ld from 130MB to 90MB by using 'ld -r' to generate relocatable object files
for our intermediate libraries instead of using 'ar'.

This could alleviate some of the pain of bug 106161 (and future library
merging).  GNU ld supports this option; Mac OS X appears to support it too.  I'm
not sure about solaris and other unix platforms.

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

cls, does this (still) sound like a good idea?

Comment 2

[cls]

I'm skeptical that the cost (added build complexity) is worth the saving for a debug build.  Also, there's the problem that we need -Ur to resolve references to constructors but -Ur can only be used for the final partial link.

Comment 3

[Gregory Szorc [:gps]]

There is only libxul. Monobinaries for the win.