Mold linker rewritten in Rust, version 3.0.0 released
Mold Linker Version 3.0.0 Release – Rewritten in Rust
Mold 3.0.0 is the first release of the high-speed linker rewritten from C++ to Rust. It remains a drop-in replacement for 2.42.1, with the same command-line options, target architectures, and performance. The rewrite improves safety: corrupted input files now cause a panic instead of a segmentation fault. The release also fixes numerous bugs and compatibility issues, moving mold closer to becoming the default linker in Linux distributions.
The move to Rust also makes mold safer with corrupted input files. The C++ version could read memory out of bounds on such input and crash with a segmentation fault. In mold 3.0, those reads are bounds-checked, so mold stops with a panic at the faulty access instead.