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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/kbuild')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/kbuild/gcc-plugins.rst | 26 |
1 files changed, 26 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/kbuild/gcc-plugins.rst b/Documentation/kbuild/gcc-plugins.rst index 3349966f213d..4b28c7a4032f 100644 --- a/Documentation/kbuild/gcc-plugins.rst +++ b/Documentation/kbuild/gcc-plugins.rst @@ -32,6 +32,32 @@ This infrastructure was ported from grsecurity [6]_ and PaX [7]_. .. [7] https://pax.grsecurity.net/ +Purpose +======= + +GCC plugins are designed to provide a place to experiment with potential +compiler features that are neither in GCC nor Clang upstream. Once +their utility is proven, the goal is to upstream the feature into GCC +(and Clang), and then to finally remove them from the kernel once the +feature is available in all supported versions of GCC. + +Specifically, new plugins should implement only features that have no +upstream compiler support (in either GCC or Clang). + +When a feature exists in Clang but not GCC, effort should be made to +bring the feature to upstream GCC (rather than just as a kernel-specific +GCC plugin), so the entire ecosystem can benefit from it. + +Similarly, even if a feature provided by a GCC plugin does *not* exist +in Clang, but the feature is proven to be useful, effort should be spent +to upstream the feature to GCC (and Clang). + +After a feature is available in upstream GCC, the plugin will be made +unbuildable for the corresponding GCC version (and later). Once all +kernel-supported versions of GCC provide the feature, the plugin will +be removed from the kernel. + + Files ===== |