Deprecation notice:

* The gold linker has been deprecated [1].  Alternatives are GNU's ld, LLVM's
  lld, and mold.
* By extension, dwp has been deprecated.  An alternative is LLVM's llvm-dwp.
  Elfutils has proposed an eu-dwp [2], but at release 0.194 it doesn't exist
  yet.
* Both these components will eventually be removed, unless volunteers (for
  either one or both components) step forward and offer to continue
  development and maintenance.

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2025-02/msg00001.html
[2] https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=31360

Changes since 1.16:

* gold and dwp now support zstd compressed debug sections.

* The new option --compress-debug-sections=zstd compresses debug sections with
  zstd.

* Remove support for -z bndplt (MPX prefix instructions).

Changes in 1.16:

* Improve warning messages for relocations that refer to discarded sections.

* Add --debug=plugin option for easier debugging of plugin-related problems.

* Add -z keep_text_section_prefix option.

* Add support for R_AARCH64_TLSLE_LDST8_TPREL_LO12, etc., relocations
  (Aarch64 only).

* Update configuration to enable plugins and threads automatically.

* Add support for .note.gnu.property sections (from Linux ABI extensions).

* Add support for Intel Indirect Branch Tracking (IBT) and Shadow Stack
  (x86-64 only).

Changes in 1.15:

* Add support for .MIPS.options sections (MIPS only).

* Add support for compound relocations (MIPS only).

* Add --emit-stub-syms, --no-tls-optimize, --tls-get-addr-optimize options
  (PowerPC only).

* Add -z text-unlikely-segment option.

* Add plugin support for adding new input files (LDPT_REGISTER_NEW_INPUT_HOOK).

Changes in 1.14:

* Add -z bndplt option (x86-64 only) to support Intel MPX.

* Add --orphan-handling option.

* Add --stub-group-multi option (PowerPC only).

* Add --target1-rel, --target1-abs, --target2 options (Arm only).

* Add -z stack-size option.

* Add --be8 option (Arm only).

* Add HIDDEN support in linker scripts.

* Add SORT_BY_INIT_PRIORITY support in linker scripts.

Changes in 1.12:

* Add a configure option --enable-relro to decide whether -z relro should
  be enabled by default.  Default to yes.

* Add support for s390, MIPS, AArch64, and TILE-Gx architectures.

* Add support for STT_GNU_IFUNC symbols.

* Add support for incremental linking (--incremental).

Changes in 1.11:

[FIXME: Add major changes.]

Changes in 1.10:

[FIXME: Add major changes.]

Changes in 1.9:

[FIXME: Add major changes.]

Changes in 1.8:

[FIXME: Add major changes.]

Changes in 1.7:

[FIXME: Add major changes.]

Changes in 1.6:

[FIXME: Add major changes.]

Changes in 1.5:

[FIXME: Add major changes.]

Changes in 1.4:

[FIXME: Add major changes.]

Changes in 1.3:

* gold added to GNU binutils.

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