Rollup merge of #141554 - Noratrieb:document-codegen-opts-better, r=bjorn3

Improve documentation for codegen options

This adds more information to many different codegen options. It should not add any new guarantees, just document existing behavior.

r? bjorn3

Author: matthiaskrgr

src/doc/rustc/src/codegen-options/index.md

@@ -192,6 +192,8 @@ to save information after compiling a crate to be reused when recompiling the
 crate, improving re-compile times. This takes a path to a directory where
 incremental files will be stored.
 
+Using incremental compilation inhibits certain optimizations (for example by increasing the amount of codegen units) and is therefore not recommend for release builds.
+
 ## inline-threshold
 
 This option is deprecated and does nothing.
@@ -213,6 +215,8 @@ This flag lets you append a single extra argument to the linker invocation.
 
 "Append" is significant; you can pass this flag multiple times to add multiple arguments.
 
+On Unix-like targets that use `cc` as the linker driver, use `-Clink-arg=-Wl,$ARG` to pass an argument to the actual linker.
+
 ## link-args
 
 This flag lets you append multiple extra arguments to the linker invocation. The
@@ -248,6 +252,10 @@ path to the linker executable. If this flag is not specified, the linker will
 be inferred based on the target. See also the [linker-flavor](#linker-flavor)
 flag for another way to specify the linker.
 
+Note that on Unix-like targets (for example, `*-unknown-linux-gnu` or `*-unknown-freebsd`)
+the C compiler (for example `cc` or `clang`) is used as the "linker" here, serving as a linker driver.
+It will invoke the actual linker with all the necessary flags to be able to link against the system libraries like libc.
+
 ## linker-flavor
 
 This flag controls the linker flavor used by `rustc`. If a linker is given with
@@ -301,6 +309,12 @@ The list must be separated by spaces.
 
 Pass `--help` to see a list of options.
 
+<div class="warning">
+
+Because this flag directly talks to LLVM, it is not subject to the usual stability guarantees of rustc's CLI interface.
+
+</div>
+
 ## lto
 
 This flag controls whether LLVM uses [link time
@@ -315,6 +329,7 @@ linking time. It takes one of the following values:
   LTO](http://blog.llvm.org/2016/06/thinlto-scalable-and-incremental-lto.html).
   This is similar to "fat", but takes substantially less time to run while
   still achieving performance gains similar to "fat".
+  For larger projects like the Rust compiler, ThinLTO can even result in better performance than fat LTO.
 
 If `-C lto` is not specified, then the compiler will attempt to perform "thin
 local LTO" which performs "thin" LTO on the local crate only across its
@@ -343,6 +358,8 @@ between two different versions of the same crate being linked.
 This flag tells the pass manager to use an empty list of passes, instead of the
 usual pre-populated list of passes.
 
+When combined with `-O --emit llvm-ir`, it can be used to see the optimized LLVM IR emitted by rustc before any optimizations are applied by LLVM.
+
 ## no-redzone
 
 This flag allows you to disable [the
@@ -379,7 +396,7 @@ This flag controls the optimization level.
 * `2`: some optimizations.
 * `3`: all optimizations.
 * `s`: optimize for binary size.
-* `z`: optimize for binary size, but also turn off loop vectorization.
+* `z`: optimize for binary size, but more aggressively. Often results in larger binaries than `s`
 
 Note: The [`-O` flag][option-o-optimize] is an alias for `-C opt-level=3`.
 
@@ -407,6 +424,9 @@ This option lets you control what happens when the code panics.
 
 If not specified, the default depends on the target.
 
+If any crate in the crate graph uses `abort`, the final binary (`bin`, `dylib`, `cdylib`, `staticlib`) must also use `abort`.
+If `std` is used as a `dylib` with `unwind`, the final binary must also use `unwind`.
+
 ## passes
 
 This flag can be used to add extra [LLVM
@@ -416,6 +436,12 @@ The list must be separated by spaces.
 
 See also the [`no-prepopulate-passes`](#no-prepopulate-passes) flag.
 
+<div class="warning">
+
+Because this flag directly talks to LLVM, it not subject to the usual stability guarantees of rustc's CLI interface.
+
+</div>
+
 ## prefer-dynamic
 
 By default, `rustc` prefers to statically link dependencies. This option will
@@ -523,12 +549,30 @@ The list of passes should be separated by spaces.
 
 ## rpath
 
-This flag controls whether [`rpath`](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rpath) is
-enabled. It takes one of the following values:
+This flag controls whether rustc sets an [`rpath`](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rpath) for the binary.
+It takes one of the following values:
 
 * `y`, `yes`, `on`, `true` or no value: enable rpath.
 * `n`, `no`, `off` or `false`: disable rpath (the default).
 
+This flag only does something on Unix-like platforms (Mach-O and ELF), it is ignored on other platforms.
+
+If enabled, rustc will add output-relative (using `@load_path` on Mach-O and `$ORIGIN` on ELF respectively) rpaths to all `dylib` dependencies.
+
+For example, for the following directory structure, with `libdep.so` being a `dylib` crate compiled with `-Cprefer-dynamic`:
+
+```text
+dep
+ |- libdep.so
+a.rs
+```
+
+`rustc a.rs --extern dep=dep/libdep.so -Crpath` will, on x86-64 Linux, result in approximately the following `DT_RUNPATH`: `$ORIGIN/dep:$ORIGIN/$RELATIVE_PATH_TO_SYSROOT/lib/rustlib/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/lib` (where `RELATIVE_PATH_TO_SYSROOT` depends on the build directory location).
+
+This is primarily useful for local development, to ensure that all the `dylib` dependencies can be found appropriately.
+
+To set the rpath to a different value (which can be useful for distribution), `-Clink-arg` with a platform-specific linker argument can be used to set the rpath directly.
+
 ## save-temps
 
 This flag controls whether temporary files generated during compilation are
@@ -545,6 +589,8 @@ point instructions in software. It takes one of the following values:
 * `y`, `yes`, `on`, `true` or no value: use soft floats.
 * `n`, `no`, `off` or `false`: use hardware floats (the default).
 
+This flag only works on `*eabihf` targets and **is unsound and deprecated**.
+
 ## split-debuginfo
 
 This option controls the emission of "split debuginfo" for debug information