The motivating use case is to support import the function declaration
across modules to construct call graph edges for indirect calls [1]
when importing the function definition costs too much compile time
(e.g., the function is too large has no `noinline` attribute).
1. Currently, when the compiled IR module doesn't have a function
definition but its postlink combined summary contains the function
summary or a global alias summary with this function as aliasee, the
function definition will be imported from source module by IRMover. The
implementation is in FunctionImporter::importFunctions [2]
2. In order for FunctionImporter to import a declaration of a function,
both function summary and alias summary need to carry the def / decl
state. Specifically, all existing summary fields doesn't differ across
import modules, but the def / decl state of is decided by
`<ImportModule, Function>`.
This change encodes the def/decl state in `GlobalValueSummary::GVFlags`.
In the subsequent changes
1. The indexing step `computeImportForModule` [3]
will compute the set of definitions and the set of declarations for each
module, and passing on the information to bitcode writer.
2. Bitcode writer will look up the def/decl state and sets the state
when it writes out the flag value. This is demonstrated in
https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/87600
3. Function importer will read the def/decl state when reading the
combined summary to figure out two sets of global values, and IRMover
will be updated to import the declaration (aka linkGlobalValuePrototype [4])
into the destination module.
- The next change is https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/87600
[1] mentioned in rfc https://discourse.llvm.org/t/rfc-for-better-call-graph-sort-build-a-more-complete-call-graph-by-adding-more-indirect-call-edges/74029#support-cross-module-function-declaration-import-5
[2] https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/3b337242ee165554f0017b00671381ec5b1ba855/llvm/lib/Transforms/IPO/FunctionImport.cpp#L1608-L1764
[3] https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/3b337242ee165554f0017b00671381ec5b1ba855/llvm/lib/Transforms/IPO/FunctionImport.cpp#L856
[4] https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/3b337242ee165554f0017b00671381ec5b1ba855/llvm/lib/Linker/IRMover.cpp#L605