In software engineering, gold is a

linker Linker or linkers may refer to: Computing * Linker (computing), a computer program that takes one or more object files generated by a compiler or generated by an assembler and links them with libraries, generating an executable program or shar ...

for

ELF An elf () is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore. Elves appear especially in North Germanic mythology. They are subsequently mentioned in Snorri Sturluson's Icelandic Prose Edda. He distinguishes "ligh ...

files. It became an official

GNU package A number of notable software packages were developed for, or are maintained by, the Free Software Foundation as part of the GNU Project. What it means to be a GNU package Summarising the situation in 2013, Richard Stallman identified nine aspects ...

and was added to

binutils The GNU Binary Utilities, or , are a set of programming tools for creating and managing binary programs, object files, libraries, profile data, and assembly source code. Tools They were originally written by programmers at Cygnus Solutions. ...

in March 2008 and first released in binutils version 2.19. gold was developed by Ian Lance Taylor and a small team at

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

. The motivation for writing gold was to make a linker that is faster than the

GNU linker In computing, a linker or link editor is a computer system program that takes one or more object files (generated by a compiler or an assembler) and combines them into a single executable file, library file, or another "object" file. A simpler ...

, especially for large

applications Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

coded in

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

. Unlike the GNU linker, gold does not use the BFD library to process

object file An object file is a computer file containing object code, that is, machine code output of an assembler or compiler. The object code is usually relocatable, and not usually directly executable. There are various formats for object files, and the ...

s. While this limits the object file formats it can process to ELF only, it is also claimed to result in a cleaner and faster implementation without an additional abstraction layer. The author cited complete removal of BFD as a reason to create a new linker from scratch rather than incrementally improve the GNU linker. This rewrite also fixes some bugs in old ld that break ELF files in various minor ways. To specify gold in a

makefile In software development, Make is a build automation tool that automatically builds executable programs and libraries from source code by reading files called ''Makefiles'' which specify how to derive the target program. Though integrated devel ...

, one sets the LD or LD environmental variable to ld.gold. To specify gold through a compiler option, one can use the gcc option -fuse-ld=gold. Fedora has moved gold from binutils into its own package due to concerns it is suffering from bitrot after Google's interest has moved to

LLVM LLVM is a set of compiler and toolchain technologies that can be used to develop a front end for any programming language and a back end for any instruction set architecture. LLVM is designed around a language-independent intermediate repre ...

References

External links

* * * * * 2008 software Programming tools Free compilers and interpreters GNU Project software {{programming-software-stub

See also

References

External links