Unstable codegen options
All of these options are passed to rustc via the -C flag, short for "codegen". The flags are
stable but some of their values are individually unstable, and also require using -Z unstable-options to be accepted.
linker-flavor
In addition to the stable set of linker flavors, the following unstable values also exist:
ptx: userust-ptx-linkerfor Nvidia NVPTX GPGPU support.bpf: usebpf-linkerfor eBPF support.
Additionally, a set of more precise linker flavors also exists, for example allowing targets to declare that they use the LLD linker by default. The following values are currently unstable, and the goal is for them to become stable, and preferred in practice over the existing stable values:
gnu: unix-like linker with GNU extensionsgnu-lld:gnuusing LLDgnu-cc:gnuusing a C/C++ compiler as the linker drivergnu-lld-cc:gnuusing LLD and a C/C++ compiler as the linker driverdarwin: unix-like linker for Apple targetsdarwin-lld:darwinusing LLDdarwin-cc:darwinusing a C/C++ compiler as the linker driverdarwin-lld-cc:darwinusing LLD and a C/C++ compiler as the linker driverwasm-lld: unix-like linker for Wasm targets, with LLDwasm-lld-cc: unix-like linker for Wasm targets, with LLD and a C/C++ compiler as the linker driverunix: basic unix-like linker for "any other Unix" targets (Solaris/illumos, L4Re, MSP430, etc), not supported with LLD.unix-cc:unixusing a C/C++ compiler as the linker drivermsvc-lld: MSVC-style linker for Windows and UEFI, with LLDem-cc: emscripten compiler frontend, similar towasm-lld-ccwith a different interface
link-self-contained
This flag generally controls whether the linker will use libraries and objects shipped with Rust
instead of those in the system. The stable boolean values for this flag are coarse-grained
(everything or nothing), but there exists a set of unstable values with finer-grained control,
-Clink-self-contained can accept a comma-separated list of components, individually enabled
(+component) or disabled (-component):
crto: CRT objects (e.g. onwindows-gnu,musl,wasitargets)libc: libc static library (e.g. onmusl,wasitargets)unwind: libgcc/libunwind (e.g. onwindows-gnu,fuchsia,fortanix,gnullvmtargets)linker: linker, dlltool, and their necessary libraries (e.g. onwindows-gnuand forrust-lld)sanitizers: sanitizer runtime librariesmingw: other MinGW libs and Windows import libs
Out of the above self-contained linking components, linker is the only one currently implemented
(beyond parsing the CLI options).
It refers to the LLD linker, built from the same LLVM revision used by rustc (named rust-lld to
avoid naming conflicts), that is distributed via rustup with the compiler (and is used by default
for the wasm targets). One can also opt-in to use it by combining this flag with an appropriate
linker flavor: for example, -Clinker-flavor=gnu-lld-cc -Clink-self-contained=+linker will use the
toolchain's rust-lld as the linker.