GSoC idea - porting and patching of userland for lld, the LLVM linker

[Roberto Rodriguez Jr.]

On Fri, Mar 06, 2015 at 01:20:07PM -0500, Jonathon McDaniels wrote:
> Hey guys,
> 
> After giving it some thought, I was thinking of porting ( as in, make it 
> a port of ) and patching the userland so a make buildworld can go 
> through on x86/AMD64 on lld, the LLVM linker, and if time permits, 
> patching the kernel to make use of it.. As the binutils included in base 
> is over 7 years old, and is unlikely to be updated due to the GPLv3, it 
> would make sense to assist with removing dependence of the FreeBSD 
> platforms now using LLVM/Clang for compiling.

Yes I love this idea. I have buildkernel_world so many times that I fell in 
love with UNIX. Thank you all for amazing software. I too want this to happen
lets have FreeBSD free of GPL_v1234..

We definitely need a new base and I am passionate enough to dedicate many hours
to help. Please anyone give me a chance. ;)   

> Before I go contact the mentors that would be within the scope of this 
> project, I wanted to make sure of the following:
> 
>   * That this would be a good use of GSoC
>   * That it is narrow enough in scope to be feasible, but broad enough
>     that it would prove a beneficial project.
> 
> Considering the environment we have now, I think it would allow me to 
> further my knowledge of C beyond what I already know ( currently working 
> on learning about dynamic linking of libraries, and I already know about 
> data structures, stacks, pointers etc. and plan to be much farther along 
> by the time of the start of the project and deliverables. ).

Yes I want to learn C and assembly! I have very little knowledge but I am
like a sponge and take advice nicely.
> 
> And since lld is compatible with the BSD license terms, and is 
> interoperable with LLVM, it seems a viable and good project to undertake.

[joke] 
FreeBSD 12 with Clang/LLVM 4.0 with optional GPL support. PureBSD!
[/joke]
 
> Thoughts from you guys?

EOF {0.02}

> Thanks,
Thank you for this nice idea. I am willing to write many more thoughts advocating this
move. 
> Jonathon "Johnny" McDaniels

Roberto Rodriguez Jr.
Wannabe UNIX enthusiast unemployed
4044743997