[ccache] Why not cache link commands?
Andrew Stubbs
ams at codesourcery.com
Wed Sep 19 03:43:21 MDT 2012
On 18/09/12 22:59, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> the linker's --build-id and associated .note.gnu.build-id section. you can't
> hash the entire object because it can change between compiles. build-id lets
> you say "regardless of the hash of the entire object, we know the content that
> matters is unchanged".
Ah, excellent, this is the sort of detail I was looking for!
My own brief experimentation shows that static libraries contain
troublesome datestamps, but object files appear to be reproducible,
given the same source and command line (the case ccache handles).
Under what circumstances can the binary change but the build-id remain
the same? I'm aware of line number, and file path differences in the
debug info. Is there anything else?
Anyway, as I understand it, ccache could dump the build-id section
first, if there is one, and hash the entire binary second, if there
isn't one.
I'm a bit concerned about the build-id though. As I read it, the
build-id can't tell the difference between a stripped binary and one
with full debug, and the two certainly produce different output (OK, a
*very* smart tool could determine that, with a certain link command or
script, two different inputs are equivalent, but let's not go there). It
can't even tell the difference between an object with *only* debug.
Hashing the entire binary could lead to additional cache misses in the
case that the user has made minor, unimportant changes to the build, but
in the normal case the object file will have come from the cache anyway
so this won't be a problem.
The library datestamps problem can be got around by hashing the output
of "ar p libNAME.a" (perhaps combined with "ar t libNAME.a", just to be
safe, but certainly not with "-v"), or perhaps "objdump -j
.note.gnu.build-id -s libNAME.a" if we want to use build-ids.
>> "-###" isn't meant to be a wildcard. That's an actual GCC option. I put
>> quotes around it because most shells would interpret the hashes as the
>> start of a comment.
>
> hmm, gotcha. it does seem to include all the necessary info. whether it's
> easy for a machine to parse across gcc versions is a diff question :). seems
> to have changed subtly over time between 3.3.6 and 4.7.1.
Probably true, but it ought to be possible to determine if we do
understand it, or not, and fall back to the old behaviour if not.
Andrew
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