[Openembedded-architecture] [oe] [meta-browser] Chromium and gold linker

[Phil Blundell]

On Mon, 2017-07-10 at 17:09 -0400, Denys Dmytriyenko wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 02:00:35PM -0700, Khem Raj wrote:
> > On 7/10/17 1:47 PM, Denys Dmytriyenko wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 04:36:42PM -0400, Denys Dmytriyenko
> > > wrote:
> > > > Khem, et al,
> > > > 
> > > > I couldn't find below patch being discussed on this mailing
> > > > list before it got 
> > > > merged:
> > > > 
> > > > https://github.com/OSSystems/meta-browser/commit/62e323848f569c
> > > > 4cdea5567b1917ce006d7705af
> > > 
> > > https://github.com/OSSystems/meta-browser/commit/55a74501bc65c90c
> > > 86e3236b51ec2dc2fc0145fb
> > > 
> > > "ld-is-gold just means that my default linker is gold, however we
> > > build
> > > both linkers, so one should be able to enable gold just for
> > > linking
> > > chromium even if default ld is bfd linker."
> > > 
> > > I strongly disagree with such interpretation - this would mean
> > > there's NO way 
> > > to disable gold linker completely, e.g. for when external
> > > toolchain doesn't 
> > > support it.
> 
> Copying OE architecture list for further discussion of "ld-is-gold"
> meaning.

The attribution above is a bit confusing so I'm not quite sure who
wrote what.  But it is certainly true that "ld-is-gold" in
DISTRO_FEATURES means, and always has meant, simply that gold is to be
installed as the default linker.  In other words, if you invoke plain
"ld", you will get gold, and if you need the BFD linker - usually
because you are using linker scripts that gold doesn't understand -
then you must invoke ld.bfd.  See
207a9013670560d62c793a66f01e19f4760a71a8 from some six years ago for
the place that it was originally added.

As far as I know, we do not have (and never have had) any
DISTRO_FEATURE that will inhibit gold from being installed altogether,
nor can I immediately think of a reason why this would be generally
useful.  Obviously, any DISTRO that wants to do this is welcome to
provide a bbappend for binutils.

p.