Linking with gold does not search /usr/local/lib

[brson]

If it thinks it can rustc will link with the gold linker. Unfortunately ld.bfd and ld.gold do not search the same paths for libraries. The bfd linker looks in the runtime linker path, while gold does not. This creates a very confusing difference in behavior.

Original report.

[eddyb]

Like I said on the on the PR, this seems to be a distro/user bug, since it would affect everything using gold, not just rustc.

[birkenfeld]

How it can be a distro bug I'm not sure, if that's just the way that gold works.

Does any distro actually install gold as the default linker (ld)? There is usually a mechanism to switch to it, but it isn't the default.

By the way, since there usually is this mechanism, why not let that extend to Rust as well, and let the user choose by whatever is ld on their system?

[rprichard]

The title says /etc/local/lib. I think it should be /usr/local/lib?

[brson]

@rprichard updated the op. Thanks.

[alexcrichton]

Removing nomination/regression tags but leaving open as to why we reverted gold

[bstrie]

leaving open as to why we reverted gold

If the implication is that this was being left open only in the event that gold was made rustc's default linker someday, at this point I think it's unlikely that gold would be chosen over something like LLD. To that end I'd suggest this can be closed.

[Mark-Simulacrum]

I agree that this doesn't seem particularly useful to keep open - this is just linker behavior, and rustc doesn't even invoke/care about linker search paths itself for the most part.