Unique ownership is just one possible ownership pattern for the memory buffer
underlying the bitcode reader. In practice, as this patch shows, ownership can
often reside at a higher level. With the upcoming change to allow multiple
modules in a single bitcode file, it will no longer be appropriate for
modules to generally have unique ownership of their memory buffer.
The C API exposes the ownership relation via the LLVMGetBitcodeModuleInContext
and LLVMGetBitcodeModuleInContext2 functions, so we still need some way for
the module to own the memory buffer. This patch does so by adding an owned
memory buffer field to Module, and using it in a few other places where it
is convenient.
What other legacy clients do we have? Is it only the C API? The C API can be handled differently: it can have its own wrapper struct around the Module class, and this wrapper would own the buffer.