Fedora 31 Looking At Making It Easy To Use LLVM's LLD Linker

Another late change proposal coming in for Fedora 31 is to allow update-alternatives to optionally point /usr/bin/ld as the default linker to /usr/bin/lld for the LLVM linker.

This change would make it much easier for Fedora users wanting to switch from the GNU BFD linker over to LLVM's LLD via the update-alternatives tool. This tool already supports using the GNU Gold linker while this late proposal by Red Hat's Tom Stellard is to handle LLVM's increasingly used LLD linker.

If this proposal is approved by FESCo, beginning in Fedora 31 it could be as easy as update-alternatives --set ld /usr/bin/lld.

The LLVM Linker is known for being a drop-in replacement to the GNU linkers while generally being much faster. LLD can also be embedded directly into programs, LTO is supported by default, and is designed to support modern use-cases. More details on LLD at LLVM.org.