Mesa CI Begins Making Use Of Mold Linker For "Substantial" Performance Improvement

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Mesa CI Begins Making Use Of Mold Linker For "Substantial" Performance Improvement

For speeding up the actual Mesa continuous integration (CI) process itself with frequently building new revisions of Mesa3D, their CI infrastructure is beginning to make use of the Mold linker as a high performance alternative to the GNU Gold and LLVM LLD linkers. This is yielding a "substantial" performance improvement in tests for being able to turnaround CI jobs faster and in turn allowing Mesa developers to be more efficient...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mesa-CI-Begins-Mold

[JacekJagosz]

I wonder if any projects will start requiring mold. So far it has been up to the packager and system config on what linker it will use, I wonder if packages will start to use it in their build, or will it simply become the new default?

[ssokolow]

I wonder if any projects will start requiring mold. So far it has been up to the packager and system config on what linker it will use, I wonder if packages will start to use it in their build, or will it simply become the new default?

Given that it's AGPLed, probably not.

[vtorri]

Given that it's AGPLed, probably not.

the lead dev wants to switch to MIT or similar, see https://github.com/rui314/mold/blob/...ONTRIBUTING.md

[MadCatX]

Given that it's AGPLed, probably not.

Would that really be an issue? Since mold is a standalone project that doesn't have to be shipped with the entire toolchain, the AGPL might not matter. So long as you're just using the program, *GPL doesn't force you to do anything... IMHO.

[ssokolow]

Would that really be an issue? Since mold is a standalone project that doesn't have to be shipped with the entire toolchain, the AGPL might not matter. So long as you're just using the program, *GPL doesn't force you to do anything... IMHO.

It can still be scary enough to companies purely on reputation for upstreams to be reluctant to take on AGPL dependencies for fear of hurting their own uptake. (And that's assuming the company hasn't just done a nuance-free "AGPL isn't an allowed license" thing because they feel it's not cost-effective to consult legal on whether it imposes any obligations on them.)

[Jannik2099]

I wonder if any projects will start requiring mold. So far it has been up to the packager and system config on what linker it will use, I wonder if packages will start to use it in their build, or will it simply become the new default?

All the ELF linkers (GNU bfd, Gold, lld, mold) are almost 100% interchangeable. Furthermore, there are not even any exclusive features one could depend on in mold, unlike with bfd or lld.

I can recall maybe two projects that hard-depend on bfd, and that is not because of an intentional choice, but because of legacy code tomfoolery. Nothing will depend on mold specifically.

[quaz0r]

lol @ the obligatory logo drawn by a 5 year old in ms paint from 1992. is that really necessary? is anyone but michael even going to bother showing the stupid logo? literally everything gets its own drawn-by-a-five-year-old logo lately. every system library nobody cares about, every new security vulnerability, ... seriously though its pretty silly

[karolherbst]

lol @ the obligatory logo drawn by a 5 year old in ms paint from 1992. is that really necessary? is anyone but michael even going to bother showing the stupid logo? literally everything gets its own drawn-by-a-five-year-old logo lately. every system library nobody cares about, every new security vulnerability, ... seriously though its pretty silly

don't look at it if you don't like it.

[brad0]

All the ELF linkers (GNU bfd, Gold, lld, mold) are almost 100% interchangeable. Furthermore, there are not even any exclusive features one could depend on in mold, unlike with bfd or lld.

I can recall maybe two projects that hard-depend on bfd, and that is not because of an intentional choice, but because of legacy code tomfoolery. Nothing will depend on mold specifically.

They're somewhat interchangeable.. as long as you fix many issues the bfd / gold linkers will let slip by.

One of the few projects that is in that scenario still is SeaBIOS. Annoying enough and fixable. Patches pending from the LLD author. But still need to be reviwed and commited.