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>

1 files changed, 40 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/scripts/Makefile.thinlto b/scripts/Makefile.thinlto
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..bb83f13f3cd6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/scripts/Makefile.thinlto
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+PHONY := __default
+__default:
+
+include include/config/auto.conf
+include $(srctree)/scripts/Kbuild.include
+include $(srctree)/scripts/Makefile.lib
+
+native-objs := $(patsubst %.o,%.thinlto-native.o,$(call read-file, vmlinux.thinlto-index))
+
+__default: $(native-objs)
+
+# Generate .thinlto-native.o (obj) from .o (bitcode) and .thinlto.bc (summary) files
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+quiet_cmd_cc_o_bc = CC $(quiet_modtag)  $@
+      be_flags = $(shell sed -n '/saved_c_flags_/s/.*:= //p' \
+                $(dir $(<)).$(notdir $(<)).cmd)
+      cmd_cc_o_bc = \
+      $(CC) $(be_flags) -x ir -fno-lto -Wno-unused-command-line-argument \
+      -fthinlto-index=$(word 2, $^) -c -o $@ $<
+
+targets += $(native-objs)
+$(native-objs): %.thinlto-native.o: %.o %.o.thinlto.bc   FORCE
+	$(call if_changed,cc_o_bc)
+
+# Add FORCE to the prerequisites of a target to force it to be always rebuilt.
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+PHONY += FORCE
+FORCE:
+
+# Read all saved command lines and dependencies for the $(targets) we
+# may be building above, using $(if_changed{,_dep}). As an
+# optimization, we don't need to read them if the target does not
+# exist, we will rebuild anyway in that case.
+
+existing-targets := $(wildcard $(sort $(targets)))
+
+-include $(foreach f, $(existing-targets),$(dir $(f)).$(notdir $(f)).cmd)
+
+.PHONY: $(PHONY)