Releases: rui314/mold
mold 2.3.2
mold 2.3.2 contains the following bug fixes.
- mold no longer emits dynamic relocations against the text segment for GNU ifunc symbols. Previously, mold emitted such relocations for position-dependent executables. (4cdfc7e)
- mold no longer reports the "REL-type relocation table is not supported for this target" error and instead ignore incompatible relocation tables. LLVM generates such non-conforming relocation tables for the
.llvm.call-graph-profilesection. This change was made for compatibility. (3791900) - mold now pads unused gaps in the text segment with interrupt or NOP instructions, instead of leaving them filled with zeros. This alteration does not change the program's semantics but prevents disassemblers from interpreting the spaces between functions as valid instructions. (c86a59a)
- mold now creates the
.mold-lockfile forMOLD_JOBSnot in the home directory but in$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR, which is usually/var/user/<uid>. (39cdf61) - [ARM32] There was an issue preventing mold from being built on an ARMv8 64-bit ARM processor with an ARM32 userland, such as the 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS running on a Raspberry Pi 4. This build issue has been resolved. (02ead29)
- [LoongArch] mold can now handle
R_LARCH_PCALA_LO12relocation for thejirlinstruction. (d3188e3)
mold 2.3.1
mold 2.3.1 contains the following bug fixes.
- [ARM32, ARM64, PowerPC, LoongArch] mold 2.3.0 would crash when handling large output files. This was due to a bug in the code that creates range extension thunks. This issue has now been resolved. (7be1b66)
- [LoongArch] mold is now capable of handling relocations generated for the
-mcmodel=extremeflag. (4bd80ec)
mold 2.3.0
mold 2.3.0 is a new release of the high-speed linker.
New features
-
[x86-64] mold 2.3.0 has introduced an experimental flag,
-z rewrite-endbr, which rewrites superfluousendbr64instructions asnop.endbr64is a relatively recent x86 instruction used to mark locations where an indirect jump instruction can transfer control. With control-flow integrity enabled (meaningendbr64is effective), an indirect jump can only target anendbr64or it will trigger a runtime exception. This mechanism significantly hinders certain control hijacking attacks, such as ROP or JOP, since attackers cannot jump to just any location.When given the
-fcf-protectionflag, GCC conservatively places anendbr64at the beginning of every global function. This is because the function's address might be taken as a pointer by other translation units. However, in most cases, function addresses are not actually taken. This conservative approach results in an overabundance of unnecessaryendbr64instructions, leading to not only code bloating but also a potential decrease in security as there are more locations for an attacker to exploit.The new linker option,
-z rewrite-endbr, aims to alleviate this issue. The linker can carry out a whole-program analysis on the input files to identify functions whose addresses are never taken. If-z rewrite-endbris specified, mold will conduct this analysis and replace the initialendbr64with anopfor functions whose addresses aren't taken.mold also emits an
endbr64in a PLT entry only when the address of the PLT entry is taken. (17f0d85)
Bug fixes and compatibility improvements
- mold now produces a more compact
.gdb_indexsection when using the--gdb-indexflag. Additionally, mold now generates a correct.gdb_indexsection for object files created by Clang. (a396fa4) - mold is now capable of handling input sections larger than 4 GiB. (0ce32d3)
- [PPC] mold can now generate executables for POWER10 processors. Previously, executables produced by mold would crash immediately on startup on POWER10. (0f71471)
- [ARM64] When a function with a non-standard calling convention is exported, it's mandatory for the linker to turn on the
STO_AARCH64_VARIANT_PCSflag to notify the dynamic linker. mold now appropriately sets this flag. (2e3b56e) - [RISC-V] mold now supports new GP-relative relocations. (ac3ee91)
Acknowledgements
mold is an open-source project, and we accept donations via GitHub Sponsors and OpenCollective. We thank everyone who sponsors our project. In particular, we'd like to acknowledge the following organizations and people who have sponsored $32/mo or more during this release cycle:
Signal Slot Inc.
Mercury
G-Research-OSS
Jinkyu Yi
Emerge Tools
Cybozu, Inc.
jfmontanaro
Steven Noonan
Brett Slatkin
Dougall Johnson
Santiago Pastorino
CubeSoft, Inc.
Rahul Butani
Kyle Lacy
daquexian
Josh Triplett
Kiril Mihaylov
mold 2.2.0
mold 2.2.0 is a new release of the high-speed linker.
New features
- We now use BLAKE3 as a cryptographic hash function instead of SHA256. This change has made
--build-ida few percent faster. libssl is no longer a build dependency. (7f7a744) - mold is now a few percent faster than the previous version due to an optimization of string merging code path. (1a13c50)
- mold now emits slightly optimized code for thread-local variable accesses. (f057fda, d56f528)
- [RISC-V] mold now supports TLSDESC relocations. TLSDESC is a new mechanism for faster thread-local variable access. We (@ishitatsuyuki) actually led the effort to ratify the specification (riscv-non-isa/riscv-elf-psabi-doc#373) and implement it to compiler toolchain including GCC, GNU binutils and, of course, mold. (141556d)
Bug fixes and compatibility improvements
- mold no longer marks an as-needed .so as "needed" if the .so file is not directly used by the output file. Previously, mold marked a .so file as "needed" if the .so file was used by another "needed" .so file. (f02db0f)
- [PPC64]
--execute-onlynow works on 64-bit PowerPC. (ac20d87, 51fec5f)
Acknowledgements
mold is an open-source project, and we accept donations via GitHub Sponsors and OpenCollective. We thank everyone who sponsors our project. In particular, we'd like to acknowledge the following organizations and people who have sponsored $32/mo or more during this release cycle:
Contributors
Assets 7
mold 2.1.0
mold 2.1.0 is a new release of the high-speed linker.
New features
- Loongson's LoongArch CPU has been supported. (03b1a1c)
-z nosectionheaderhas been added to eliminate section headers from the output file. (084ca55)
Bug fixes and compatibility improvements
- Previously, linking with the
-z pack-relative-relocsoption produces an executable that glibc 2.38 refuses to run withDT_RELR without GLIBC_ABI_DT_RELR dependencyerror. Now, mold produces binaries compatible with glibc 2.38. (f467ad1) - [ARM64]
R_AARCH64_ADR_PREL_PG_HI21_NCrelocation type has been supported. (17a5c3e) - [ARM64]
R_AARCH64_MOVW_UABS_G3relocation type has now been handled as a PLT-generating relocation to fix an issue when main is not defined in the main executable but rather in a .so file. (e764557) - [RISC-V] We now merge input
.riscv.attributescontents. Previously, we just concatenated them. (aa64491)
Acknowledgements
mold is an open-source project, and we accept donations via GitHub Sponsors and OpenCollective. We thank everyone who sponsors our project. In particular, we'd like to acknowledge the following organizations and people who have sponsored $32/mo or more during this release cycle:
- GlareDB
- Cybozu, Inc.
- Signal Slot Inc.
- Mercury
- Jinkyu Yi
- G-Research-OSS
- Sanjeev
- a_p_u_r_o
- Emerge Tools
- Brett Slatkin
- Dougall Johnson
- Santiago Pastorino
- daquexian
- CubeSoft, Inc.
- Bryant Biggs
- Luke Kasz
- Marko Mikulicic
- Iain H
- nasa
- Robey Pointer
- Junho Choi
- Markus Schirp
- Sebastian DrΓΆge
- Martin LiΕ‘ka
- Masahiro Aoki
- Brian Gesiak
- Jonatan Klemets
- Ernesto Cambuston
- vadorovsky
- Takaki Ueno
- Yusuke Ito
- Adam Gutglick
- Florian Plattner
- Christoph Gross
- yossyX
- Dario Nieuwenhuis
- Guillaume Racicot
- Josh Triplett
- Tetsuo Kiso
- Shane Sveller
- Michael McLoughlin
- DragonflyDB
- Michael Sproul
- Brian Gianforcaro
- Kentaro Tanaka
- Shinichiro Hamaji
- strager
- JoJo
- Zhihao Yuan
- Yutaro Ohno
- Jonathan Goodman
- Wataru Sekiguchi
- JosΓ© M Rico
- Vladimir Miloserdov
- kazu-42
- Foxie Solutions
mold 2.0.0
Mold 2.0.0 is a new major release of our high-speed linker. With this release, we've transitioned our license from AGPL to MIT, aiming to expand the user base of our linker. This was not an easy decision, as those who have been following our progress know that we've been attempting to monetize our product through an AGPL/commercial license dual-licensing scheme. Unfortunately, this approach didn't meet our expectations. The license change represents our acceptance of this reality. We don't want to persist with a strategy that didn't work well.
As always, we welcome new GitHub sponsors. If you are happy with the license change, please consider becoming a sponsor.
In addition to the license change, here is a list of updates we have made in this release:
- Previously, mold could not produce an object file with more than 65520 sections using the
--relocatableoption. Now the bug has been fixed. (2e8bd0b) - mold now interprets
-undefinedas a synonym for--undefinedinstead of-u ndefined. This seems inconsistent, as-ufoois generally treated as-u foo(which is an alias for--undefined foo), but this is the behavior of the GNU linkers and LLVM lld, so we prioritize compatibility over consistency. -nopieis now handled as a synonym for--no-pie.- [RISC-V]
R_RISCV_SET_ULEB128andR_RISCV_SUB_ULEB128relocation types are now supported (4bffe26, 1ac5fe7) - [PPC64]
R_PPC64_REL32relocation type is now supported. (ebd780e)
mold 1.11.0
mold 1.11.0 is a new release of the high-speed linker. This is not a big release but includes general improvements and bug fixes.
New features
- IBM Power10 has been supported. Previously, mold created broken executables for that target. (5065547)
--hash-style=nonehas been added to cancel--hash-style=sysv,--hash-style=gnuor--hash-style=both. (ec75633)- [ARM32]
R_ARM_PLT32relocation type has been supported. (e505900) - [RISC-V]
R_RISCV_PLT32relocation type has been supported. (51845ac)
Bug fixes and compatibility improvements
- Previous versions of mold failed to link some programs in rare corner cases if Link-Time Optimization (LTO) is enabled. These bugs have been fixed. (e1a7590, 62d6537)
- mold used to ignore dependencies between DSOs. Since this version, if a required DSO depends on other as-needed DSO, mold keeps the latter DSO as a required one. This improves compatibility with GNU linkers. (1adde7a)
- [x86-64] mold can now link object files generated by old buggy versions of GCC. (d2970e0)
- [x86-64] Previously, a program with a very large
.bsssection may fail to link due toR_X86_64_REX_GOTPCRELXrelocation overflow (#975). This bug has been fixed. (627bf7c)
Acknowledgements
mold is an open-source project, and we accept donations via GitHub Sponsors and OpenCollective. We thank you to everybody who sponsors our project. In particular, we'd like to acknowledge the following organizations and people who have sponsored $32/mo or more during this release cycle:
mold 1.10.1
mold 1.10.1 contains only the following bug fix:
- mold 1.10.0 had a buffer overrun bug that causes the linker to terminate immediately if compiled with
-D_GLIBCXX_ASSERTIONS. We fixed the unsafe memory access in this release. (7e65546)
mold 1.10.0
New features
- mold now officially supports the
--print-dependenciesoption to print out dependency information between input files. Here is a truncated example output when linking mold itself with the option. There are many use cases of the option; for example, if you want to eliminate the dependency to some library from your program, you can use this option to find out all the functions that use the library's function to fix them. (6fd47db) - [x86-64][s390x] mold now optimizes thread-local variable accesses in shared libraries if the library is linked with
-z nodlopen. If your shared library is not intended to be used via dlopen(2) and your library frequently accesses thread-local variables, you might want to pass that option when linking your library. (25d02bb, f32ce33) - [arm64] mold is now able to optimize GOT load by rewriting an ADDR+LDR instruction pair with an ADDR+ADD if the loaded GOT value is known at link-time. (f2311b1)
Bug fixes and compatibility improvements
- mold 1.9.0 was up to 10% slower than 1.8.0 on some multicore machines. We fixed the performance regression and made it even faster than 1.8.0. (7132822)
- Previously, mold failed to report an undefined symbol error if there's a weak undefined symbol of the same name. That bug resulted in producing a non-working executable instead of reporting a link failure. Now, mold correctly reports such link errors. (8936194)
- mold 1.9.0 might crash with SIGSEGV if
--emit-relocsis used with object files containing debug info. That bug has been fixed. (e17d7da)
Acknowledgements
mold is an open-source project, and we accept donations via GitHub Sponsors and OpenCollective. We thank you to everybody who sponsors our project. In particular, we'd like to acknowledge the following organizations and people who have sponsored $32/mo or more during this release cycle:
mold 1.9.0
New features
- mold gained support for the three new targets: 32-bit PowerPC, SH-4 and DEC Alpha. Each porting work didn't take more than a few days for us to complete, which demonstrate how portable the mold linker is. You can typically port mold to a new target just by writing a few hundreds lines of target-specific code. See
arch-*.ccfiles in mold/elf/ directory to see how target-specific code actually looks like. (651adad, 3411e17, 6231510)
Bug fixes and compatibility improvements
- In a rare occasion, a statically-initialized function pointer might get a wrong address in a statically-linked executable. This bug has been fixed. (ccd47db)
- Fixed a
-gdb-indexoption's crash bug on big-endian hosts. (3c96828) - [RISC-V] mold rewrote machine instructions in a wrong way as a result of a wrong
R_RISCV_HI20relaxation if the output file was being linked against the high address. It's not a problem for user-land programs, but kernels linked with mold could crash due to this bug. This bug has been fixed. (3c96828)
Acknowledgements
mold is an open-source project, and we accept donations via GitHub Sponsors and OpenCollective. We thank you to everybody who sponsors our project. In particular, we'd like to acknowledge the following organizations and people who have sponsored $32/mo or more during this release cycle: