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Gold
gold is a new linker intended as a replacement for the ld.bfd linker.
The two installed linkers are available directly as ld.bfd and ld.gold respectively. Additionally, the default linker is also installed as ld - and this binary is used by compilers.
Installation
package.env
To make the change persistent across re-installations of binutils, one should pass a flag to the binutils configure script. This can be done using the EXTRA_ECONF variable in a package.env configuration.
/etc/portage/env/gold.confEnvironment override to enable gold by defaultEXTRA_ECONF="--enable-gold=default"
/etc/portage/package.envEnabling gold.conf override for binutilssys-devel/binutils gold.conf
Remerge
After setting EXTRA_ECONF, (r)emerge sys-devel/binutils:
root #emerge --ask --changed-use --deep --oneshot --verbose sys-devel/binutilsConfiguration
Switching the default linker
The easy way
Emerge >=sys-devel/binutils-config-3 and set default linker to gold:
root #binutils-config --linker ld.gold* Setting default linker to ld.gold for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-2.22 ... [ ok ]
The hard way (manually)
The default linker can be changed immediately by linking ld to ld.gold in the binutils directory.
user $readlink -f /usr/bin/ld/usr/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/binutils-bin/2.22/ld
Hard link:
root #ln -f /usr/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/binutils-bin/2.22/ld.gold /usr/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/binutils-bin/2.22/ldSymbolic link:
root #ln -sf ld.gold /usr/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/binutils-bin/2.22/ld