Mirror for https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/11098 since that needs moderation first (submitted Jul 16 2015)

gistfile1.txt

We're working on supporting Bitcode in PSPDFKit but hit a blocking issue with OpenSSL (latest 1.0.2d).

We're using a script that downloads and builds OpenSSL into fat static libraries for both Mac and iOS. I've put the gist here:
https://gist.github.com/steipete/ce09ba176a4b8ef66b2d/bf053eab1c0f8494dcd3748079543c4ed4367b9c

Enabling Bitcode should be as easy as adding `-fembed-bitcode` as clang flag according to this entry. That's exactly what I did.

Now things build, but the script eventually stops with this error:
ld: could not open bitcode temp file: ../libcrypto.a(aes-x86_64.o) for architecture x86_64

Full log here: https://gist.github.com/steipete/8daebf333263c98ec752

Now I assume this is because aes-x86_64.o is compiled from aes-x86_64.s which is assembly - so there can't be any bitcode generated for it.
According to this forum entry this shouldn't be a problem.

Things also compile well for the armv7 and arm64 part:
https://gist.github.com/steipete/539c924ad939ca8e3f36

I assume this is because there, aes.c can be compiled to bitcode (there's no specialized assembly for armv7/arm64)
Here's a list of the specialized code paths for aes:
https://github.com/luvit/openssl/tree/master/openssl/crypto/aes/asm

I've verified with `otool -l lib.o | grep bitcode` that the armv7/64 parts indeed contains bitcode. (Emiting lots of sectname __bitcode entries)

Now here's my question. What am I doing wrong? Is this a bug, can we only build libraries with bitcode when there is no assembly used?
Or do we need to customize the script to not pass `-fembed-bitcode` when compiling assembly?

Update: While writing this, I investigated more and found that when we add the `no-asm` flag to the x86_64 architecture, it does work.
Yet, this obviously degrates performance, so I'd love to have a second opinion from someone from the LLVM/Clang team.

tl;dr If you don't care about performance and want OpenSSL with Bitcode, use this script and maybe say thanks on Twitter; @steipete here.
https://gist.github.com/steipete/ce09ba176a4b8ef66b2d

Thank you for this writeup! I am concerned about the asm issue because it also can be used to help guard against timing side-channel attacks (memcmp) in crypto libraries caused by overly aggressive optimization. There's also the bigger issue of Apple's unknown modification of crypto code during their 'optimization' step.

Agreed. I posted this in the forums, hopefully somebody knows more.