[GHC] #12735: Evaluate the feasibility of using lld for linking

[GHC]

#12735: Evaluate the feasibility of using lld for linking
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           Reporter:  bgamari        |             Owner:
               Type:  task           |            Status:  new
           Priority:  normal         |         Milestone:
          Component:  Runtime        |           Version:  8.0.1
  System (Linker)                    |
           Keywords:                 |  Operating System:  Unknown/Multiple
       Architecture:                 |   Type of failure:  None/Unknown
  Unknown/Multiple                   |
          Test Case:                 |        Blocked By:
           Blocking:                 |   Related Tickets:
Differential Rev(s):                 |         Wiki Page:
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 Our runtime system's linker a represents a significant amount of rather
 tricky code. We have in the past attempted to jettison it by moving to
 dynamic linking, although this lead to its own set of issues (see
 [DynamicLinkingDebate]).

 Another approach would be to let someone else implement our linker for us.
 While in the past linkers were rather monolithic things, today there
 exists LLVM's `lld` [http://lld.llvm.org/|linker]. Like the other LLVM
 projects, its design is quite modular and can be used as a library. It
 seems likely that it could be made to do our bidding with enough effort.
 The question, of course, is whether this effort is greater than the effort
 we currently spend on the runtime linker.

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Ticket URL: <http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/12735>
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