A linker takes one or more object, archive, and library files, and combines them into an output file (an executable, a shared library, or another object file). It relocates code and data from the input files and resolves symbol references between them.

is a drop-in replacement for the GNU BFD and gold linkers. It accepts most of the same command line arguments and linker scripts as GNU linkers.

currently supports i386, x86-64, ARM, AArch64, PowerPC32, PowerPC64, MIPS32, MIPS64, RISC-V, AMDGPU, Hexagon and SPARC V9 targets.

acts as a Microsoft link.exe-compatible linker if invoked as

and as macOS's ld if invoked as

All these targets are always supported however

was built, so you can always use

as a native linker as well as a cross linker.

Many options have both a single-letter and long form. When using the long form options other than those beginning with the letter

may be specified using either one or two dashes preceding the option name. Long options beginning with

require two dashes to avoid confusion with the

option.

Do not error if a symbol is defined multiple times. The first definition will be used.

Allow unresolved references in shared libraries. This option is enabled by default when linking a shared library.

Apply link-time values for dynamic relocations.

Only set

for shared libraries if used.

Set the

field to the specified name.

Link against shared libraries.

Do not link against shared libraries.

Bind defined symbols locally.

Bind defined function symbols locally.

Generate a build ID note.

may be one of

and

is an alias for

Build-IDs of type

and

are calculated from the object contents.

is not intended to be cryptographically secure.

Synonym for

Use colors in diagnostics.

may be one of

and

enables color if and only if output is to a terminal.

Alias for

Compress DWARF debug sections.

may be

or

The default compression level is 1 (fastest) as the debug info usually compresses well at that level, but if you want to compress it more, you can specify

to set the compression level to 6.

Output cross reference table.

Assign space to common symbols.

Define a symbol alias.

may be another symbol or a linker script expression. For example,

or

Demangle symbol names.

Disable new dynamic tags.

Delete all local symbols.

Delete temporary local symbols.

Keep all symbols in the symbol table.

Specify the dynamic linker to be used for a dynamically linked executable. This is recorded in an ELF segment of type

Read a list of dynamic symbols from

(executable) Put matched non-local defined symbols to the dynamic symbol table. (shared object) References to matched non-local STV_DEFAULT symbols shouldn't be bound to definitions within the shared object. Implies

but does not set DF_SYMBOLIC

Request creation of

section and

segment header.

Generate relocations in the output.

Enable new dynamic tags.

End a grouping of objects that should be treated as if they were together in an archive.

Name of entry point symbol.

Maximum number of errors to emit before stopping. A value of zero indicates that there is no limit.

Report unresolved symbols as errors.

Call script

upon some error, with

as first argument, and an extra parameter as second argument. The script is expected to return 0 on success. Any other value is considered a generic error.

may be

followed by the name of the missing library.

followed by the name of the undefined symbol.

Mark executable sections unreadable. This option is currently only supported on AArch64.

Exclude static libraries from automatic export.

Put symbols in the dynamic symbol table.

(executable) Put matched non-local defined symbols to the dynamic symbol table. (shared object) References to matched non-local STV_DEFAULT symbols shouldn't be bound to definitions within the shared object even if they would otherwise be due to

,

or

Treat warnings as errors.

Set the

field to the specified value.

Specify a finalizer function.

Specify the format of the inputs following this option.

may be one of

and

is a synonym for

Enable garbage collection of unused sections.

Generate

section.

Specify hash style.

may be

or

is the default.

Print a help message.

Enable identical code folding.

Enable safe identical code folding.

Disable identical code folding.

Ignore address equality of data. C/C++ requires each data to have a unique address. This option allows lld to do unsafe optimization that breaks the requirement: create copies of read-only data or merge two or more read-only data that happen to have the same value.

Ignore address equality of functions. This option allows non-PIC calls to a function with non-default visibility in a shared object. The function may have different addresses within the executable and within the shared object.

Set the base address to

Specify an initializer function.

Do not fold

during ICF.

Root name of library to use.

Add a directory to the library search path.

AA pipeline to run during LTO. Used in conjunction with

Passes to run during LTO.

Optimization level for LTO.

Number of LTO codegen partitions.

Set target emulation.

Print a link map to

Do not page align sections, link against static libraries.

Do not allow unresolved references in shared libraries. This option is enabled by default when linking an executable.

Always set

for shared libraries.

Do not use colors in diagnostics.

Do not assign space to common symbols.

Do not demangle symbol names.

Inhibit output of an

section.

Do not search archive members for definitions to override COMMON symbols.

Disable garbage collection of unused sections.

Disable STB_GNU_UNIQUE symbol binding.

Disable merging .ARM.exidx entries.

Page align sections.

Do not set the text data sections to be writable, page align sections.

Disable target-specific relaxations. This is currently a no-op.

Do not put read-only non-executable sections in their own segment.

Report version scripts that refer undefined symbols.

Report unresolved symbols even if the linker is creating a shared library.

Do not warn about problems with the symbol ordering file or call graph profile.

Restores the default behavior of loading archive members.

Do not create a position independent executable.

Retain the executable output file whenever it is still usable.

Only search directories specified on the command line.

Write the output executable, library, or object to

If not specified,

is used as a default.

Optimize output file size.

may be:

Disable string merging.

Enable string merging.

Enable string tail merging. If

is given, compress debug sections at compression level 6 instead of 1.

is the default.

Specify the format for the output object file. The only supported

is

which produces output with no ELF header.

Set the text and data sections to be readable and writable, do not page align sections, link against static libraries.

Write optimization remarks in YAML format to

Filter optimization remarks by only allowing the passes matching

Include hotness information in the optimization remarks file.

Control how orphan sections are handled. An orphan section is one not specifically mentioned in a linker script.

may be:

Place orphan sections in suitable output sections.

Place orphan sections as for

and also report a warning.

Place orphan sections as for

and also report an error.

is the default.

Pack dynamic relocations in the given format.

may be:

Do not pack. Dynamic relocations are encoded in SHT_REL(A).

Pack dynamic relocations in SHT_ANDROID_REL(A).

Pack relative relocations in SHT_RELR, and the rest of dynamic relocations in SHT_REL(A).

Pack relative relocations in SHT_RELR, and the rest of dynamic relocations in SHT_ANDROID_REL(A).

is the default. If

is specified, use SHT_ANDROID_RELR instead of SHT_RELR.

Always generate position independent thunks.

Create a position independent executable.

List removed unused sections.

List identical folded sections.

Print a link map to the standard output.

Write archive usage statistics to the specified file. Print the numbers of members and fetched members for each archive.

Save the current state of

and

Undo the effect of

Create relocatable object file.

Write a tar file to

containing all the input files needed to reproduce the link, a text file called response.txt containing the command line options and a text file called version.txt containing the output of ld.lld --version. The archive when unpacked can be used to re-run the linker with the same options and input files.

Retain only the symbols listed in the file.

Add a

to the output.

Quoting style for response files. The supported values are

and

Read linker script from

If multiple linker scripts are given, they are processed as if they were concatenated in the order they appeared on the command line.

Set address of section.

Build a shared object.

Shuffle input sections using the given seed. If 0, use a random seed.

Set

to

This option is ignored for GNU compatibility.

Specifies sections sorting rule when linkerscript is used.

Start a grouping of objects that should be treated as if they were together in an archive.

Strip all symbols.

Strip debugging information.

Lay out sections in the order specified by

Set the system root.

Interpret

as

Interpret

as

Interpret

as

where

is one of

or

Same as

with

as the sectionname.

Same as

with

as the sectionname.

Same as

with

as the sectionname.

Path to ThinLTO cached object file directory.

Pruning policy for the ThinLTO cache.

Number of ThinLTO jobs.

Number of threads.

(default) means all of concurrent threads supported.

disables multi-threading.

Record time trace.

Write time trace output to

Minimum time granularity (in microseconds) traced by time profiler.

Print the names of the input files.

Trace references to

If

is not defined after symbol resolution, and there's a static library that contains an object file defining the symbol, load the member to include the object file in the output file.

Synonym for

except that it takes a glob pattern. In a glob pattern,

matches zero or more characters,

matches any single character, and

matches the characters within brackets. All symbols that match a given pattern are handled as if they were given as arguments of

Creates a separate output section for every orphan input section.

Determine how to handle unresolved symbols.

Use SHT_ANDROID_RELR / DT_ANDROID_RELR* tags instead of SHT_RELR / DT_RELR*.

Display the version number and proceed with linking if object files are specified.

Display the version number and exit.

Verbose mode.

Read version script from

Warn about reverse or cyclic dependencies to or between static archives. This can be used to ensure linker invocation remains compatible with traditional Unix-like linkers.

Glob describing an archive (or an object file within --start-lib) which should be ignored for

Warn about duplicate common symbols.

Warn about using ifunc symbols in conjunction with text relocations. Older versions of glibc library (2.28 and earlier) has a bug that causes the segment that includes ifunc symbols to be marked as not executable when they are relocated. As a result, although the program compiles and links successfully, it gives segmentation fault when the instruction pointer reaches an ifunc symbol. Use -warn-ifunc-textrel to let lld give a warning, if the code may include ifunc symbols, may do text relocations and be linked with an older glibc version. Otherwise, there is no need to use it, as the default value does not give a warning. This flag has been introduced in late 2018, has no counter part in ld and gold linkers, and may be removed in the future.

Report unresolved symbols as warnings.

Force load of all members in a static library.

Redirect

references to

and

references to

Linker option extensions.

Resolve a relocation in a matched non-SHF_ALLOC section referencing a discarded symbol to

Accepts globs, in the event of a section matching more than one option, the last option takes precedence. An order of least specific to most specific match is recommended.

Make the main stack executable. Stack permissions are recorded in the

segment.

Force enable AArch64 BTI instruction in PLT, warn if Input ELF file does not have GNU_PROPERTY_AARCH64_FEATURE_1_BTI property.

Force enable Intel Indirect Branch Tracking in PLT, warn if an input ELF file does not have GNU_PROPERTY_X86_FEATURE_1_IBT property.

Sets the

section. Different loaders can decide how to handle this flag on their own.

Do not emit PLT entries for ifunc symbols. Instead, emit text relocations referencing the resolver. This is an experimental optimization and only suitable for standalone environments where text relocations do not have the usual drawbacks. This option must be combined with the

option.

Sets the

flag to indicate the module should be initialized first.

Set the

flag to indicate to the runtime linker that the object is an interposer. During symbol resolution interposers are searched after the application but before other dependencies.

Do not error if a symbol is defined multiple times. The first definition will be used. This is a synonym for

Disable combining and sorting multiple relocation sections.

Disable the creation of copy relocations.

Set the

flag to indicate that default library search paths should be ignored.

Set the

flag to indicate that the object cannot be unloaded from a process.

Set the

flag to indicate that the object may not be opened by

Do not emit the

segment.

Do not indicate that portions of the object should be mapped read-only after initial relocation processing. The object will omit the

segment.

Allow relocations against read-only segments. Sets the

section.

Set the

flag to indicate that the run-time loader should perform all relocation processing as part of object initialization. By default relocations may be performed on demand.

Set the

flag to indicate that the object requires $ORIGIN processing.

AArch64 only, use pointer authentication in PLT.

Use REL format for dynamic relocations.

Use RELA format for dynamic relocations.

Emit retpoline format PLT entries as a mitigation for CVE-2017-5715.

Make the

section read-only. The

tag will not be emitted.

Specify whether two adjacent PT_LOAD segments are allowed to overlap in pages.

(default) allows overlap.

allows overlap between two executable segments, or two non-executable segments.

disallows overlap.

x86 only, use shadow stack.

Set the main thread's stack size to

The stack size is recorded as the size of the

program segment.

Do not allow relocations against read-only segments. This is the default.

Create a

segment.

handing of archive files (those with a

file extension) is different from traditional linkers used on Unix-like systems.

Traditional linkers maintain a set of undefined symbols during linking. The linker processes each file in the order in which it appears on the command line, until the set of undefined symbols becomes empty. An object file is linked into the output object when it is encountered, with its undefined symbols added to the set. Upon encountering an archive file a traditional linker searches the objects contained therein, and processes those that satisfy symbols in the unresolved set.

Handling mutually dependent archives may be awkward when using a traditional linker. Archive files may have to be specified multiple times, or the special command line options

and

may be used to have the linker loop over the files in the group until no new symbols are added to the set.

records all symbols found in objects and archives as it iterates over command line arguments. When

encounters an undefined symbol that can be resolved by an object file contained in a previously processed archive file, it immediately extracts and links it into the output object.

With certain archive inputs

may produce different results compared to traditional linkers. In practice, large bodies of third party software have been linked with

without material issues.

The

option may be used to identify a linker invocation that may be incompatible with traditional Unix-like linker behavior.