The bitcode format is described in this document:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B036uwnWM6RWdnBLakxmeDdOeXc/view
For more info on ThinLTO see:
https://sites.google.com/site/llvmthinlto
The first customer is ThinLTO, however the data structures are designed
and named more generally based on prior feedback. There are a few
comments regarding how certain interfaces are used by ThinLTO, and the
options added here to gold (and to a separate clang patch which will
be mailed along with this) currently have ThinLTO-specific names as the
behavior they provoke is currently ThinLTO-specific.
This patch includes support for generating per-module function indexes,
the combined index file via the gold plugin, and several tests
(more are included with the associated clang patch).
Comment nit: "during the initial compile step" seems weird and not wholly accurate.
Relatedly: would a transform be expected to keep it up to date? Is it recomputed on every write? (Seems reasonable, but costly).