How do I enable link time optimization (LTO) with CMake?

Question

I have the most recent cmake build and trying all build configurations (Debug, MinSizeRel, RelWithDebugInfo, Release, General) I see nowhere (text search) in generated makefiles the string -lto, so or the functionality is still not present, or it requires manual intervertion (in that case a text search for LTO or Link time optimization) over the documentation gives no result, so I see nowhere in official documentation a way to enable LTO.

Is there any way to enable LTO "globally" (for all compilers) without specifying manually flags that could be at worst supported only by GCC?

Answer 1

Good news! CMake v3.9 finally supports LTO.

---

Example

Here's an example code to show how it works:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.9.4)

include(CheckIPOSupported)
check_ipo_supported(RESULT supported OUTPUT error)

add_executable(example Example.cpp)

if( supported )
    message(STATUS "IPO / LTO enabled")
    set_property(TARGET example PROPERTY INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION TRUE)
else()
    message(STATUS "IPO / LTO not supported: <${error}>")
endif()

For GCC this adds -flto -fno-fat-lto-objects to the targets compile commands.

---

Checking Compiler Support

The Module CheckIPOSupported provides checking whether interprocedural optimization (IPO/LTO) is supported by the compiler or not:

check_ipo_supported([RESULT <result>] [OUTPUT <output>]
                    [LANGUAGES <lang>...])

If no arguments is passed (= check_ipo_supported()) an error is raised to indicate it's not supported, otherwise the result variable is set to either YES or NO. More details are described in the documentation of the module.

---

Enabling LTO

LTO is enabled either for a single target or as default for all targets.

LTO for a single target

To enable LTO for a target set INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION to TRUE. This is done by the set_property() command:

set_property(TARGET name-target-here
             PROPERTY INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION TRUE)

LTO as default

It's possible to enable LTO per default by setting CMAKE_INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION to TRUE:

set(CMAKE_INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION TRUE)

This will enable INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION for all targets created after this line. Those created before are not affected.

---

See also

• CMake issue
• Related Pull Requests

Answer 2

Edit: as of 28 October, 2015 on CMake IRC

jcelerier | I have a question about INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION
jcelerier | it sounds like it should enable -flto on gcc
+ngladitz | jcelerier: its only implemented for the intel compiler
jcelerier | ngladitz: ah, okay
jcelerier | are there other switches for pgo / lto ?
jcelerier | or must it be done by hand ?
+ngladitz | there currently is no first class support otherwise     

Related CMake issue: https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/issues/15245

---

CMake has the INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION property on targets, which sounds like it may enable LTO on some platforms.

Link : http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.0/prop_tgt/INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION.html

To enable it on a target MyLib :

add_library(MyLib ...)
...
set_property(TARGET MyLib PROPERTY INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION True)

Answer 3

Yep, according to source code there are no support for LTO for gcc/clang compilers. They have some support for Intel compiler only.

I have some grep output for cmake 3.4.3:

grep -HiR 'INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION' *
Help/manual/cmake-properties.7.rst:  
/prop_dir/INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION_CONFIG
Help/manual/cmake-properties.7.rst:  
/prop_dir/INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION
Help/manual/cmake-properties.7.rst:  
/prop_tgt/INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION_CONFIG
Help/manual/cmake-properties.7.rst:  
/prop_tgt/INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION
Help/prop_dir/INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION.rst:INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION
Help/prop_dir/INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION_CONFIG.rst:INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION_<CONFIG    
Help/prop_dir/INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION_CONFIG.rst:This is a
per-configuration version of INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION.
Help/prop_tgt/INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION.rst:INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION
Help/prop_tgt/INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION_CONFIG.rst:INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION_<CONFIG    
Help/prop_tgt/INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION_CONFIG.rst:This is a
per-configuration version of INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION.
Modules/Platform/Linux-Intel.cmake:    # INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION
Source/cmCommonTargetGenerator.cxx: 
if(this->GetFeatureAsBool("INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION"))
Source/cmGeneratorTarget.cxx:          
"INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION", config))
Source/cmMakefileLibraryTargetGenerator.cxx: 
if(this->GetFeatureAsBool("INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION") &&
Tests/IPO/CMakeLists.txt:set_property(DIRECTORY PROPERTY
INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION 1)

As you can see we have only Intel platform module.

So I have created feature request for this extremely useful feature: https://cmake.org/Bug/view.php?id=15939