Mold 1.1.1 Released With Optimized Memory Usage, New Options

A new version of the high performance, open-source Mold linker is now available with more feature additions and performance optimizations.

Last year marked the release of Mold 1.0 as a high performance linker to take on GNU Gold and LLVM LLD. Mold's development has been led by Rui Ueyama who originally spearheaded LLVM's linker work. Even going back to the v1.0 times, Mold's performance has been exceptional:

Since then Mold has continued to improve and last month brought Mold 1.1. With Mold 1.1 there is native LTO (Link-Time Optimization) support, RISC-V CPU architecture support, and other shiny improvements. This was succeeded last night by Mold 1.1.1.

With Mold 1.1.1 support for the --dependency-file, --reverse-sections, --noinhibit-exec, --warn-shared-textrel, and a variety of LTO-related options were added to Mold. The new LTO options added should enhance compatibility with LLVM's LLD.

Mold 1.1.1 has also optimized its memory usage by reducing the sizes of frequently-allocated objects. Mold 1.1.1 should have around a 6% reduction in the maximum resident set sizes when linking Chromium, as an example. The maximum resident set sizes are consistently coming in smaller than LLVM LLD and GNU Gold. Mold 1.1.1 also has improvements around Intel CET handling and various bug fixes.

Downloads and more details on the Mold 1.1.1 linker via GitHub.