From 1336711c9cf182e4c9ba433f4234f5358b5a50c6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: =?UTF-8?q?Daniel=20Mart=C3=AD?= Date: Sun, 8 Nov 2020 16:16:12 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] CONTRIBUTING: include some basic terminology (#188) Fixes #132. --- CONTRIBUTING.md | 18 ++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 18 insertions(+) diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md index 624bb50b..50825fa1 100644 --- a/CONTRIBUTING.md +++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md @@ -30,6 +30,24 @@ To inject code into the syntax tree, don't write `go/ast` nodes by hand; you can generate them by typing Go source into tools such as [astextract](https://lu4p.github.io/astextract/). +### Terminology + +The *Go toolchain*, or simply *the toolchain*, refers to the `go` command and +all of its components used to build programs, such as the compiler and linker. + +An *object file* or *archive file* contains the output of compiling a Go +package, later used to link a binary. + +An *import config* is a temporary text file passed to the compiler via the +`-importcfg` flag, which contains an *object file* path for each direct +dependency. + +A *build ID* is a slash-separated list of hashes for a build operation, such as +compiling a package or linking binary. The first component is the *action ID*, +the hash of the operation's inputs, and the last component is the *content ID*, +the hash of the operation's output. For more, read +[the docs in buildid.go](https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/cmd/go/internal/work/buildid.go) + ### Benchmarking A build benchmark is available, to be able to measure the cost of builing a