Linking

Linking is the step when you take object files that were produced by previously compiled source files and combine them together in a final executable or shared library. The saker.clang.link() task performs this operation:

$compile = saker.clang.compile(src/**/*.cpp)
saker.clang.link($compile)

The above will simply create an executable from the source files in the src directory. Passing arguments for clang is possible using the SimpleParameters parameter:

$compile = saker.clang.compile(src/**/*.cpp)
saker.clang.link(
	$compile,
	SimpleParameters: [
		# create a shared library
		-shared
	]
)

The above will perform the linking by adding the -shared argument for the clang invocation.

Output

The output of the linking is placed in the build directory. It will be under the {build-dir}/saker.clang.link/{compilation-id} directory where {compilation-id} is the compilation identifier of the linker pass of the compilation.

Compilation identifier

The compilation identifier uniquely identifies a given linker pass during the build system execution. It is used to distinguish the different linking operations, their outputs, and to prevent accidental overwriting of each others outputs. The Identifier parameter can be used to set a custom one:

saker.clang.link(
	Input: #### ... ###,
	Identifier: main
)

The compilation identifier is also used to determine if any linker options need to be merged for the linker pass.