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ELD Roadmap – Key Focus Areas

ELD aims to be a production‑quality, open‑source linker for embedded systems, aligned with the LLVM ecosystem and the broader open‑source community.

Table of Contents

Areas for Development

ELF and Command Line Support

  • Expand command‑line option coverage for GNU ld and lld compatibility
  • Improve and extend ELF feature support across embedded targets

Linker Script Features and Compatibility

  • Incrementally add GNU linker script keywords and semantics
  • Improve compatibility to ease migration from existing toolchains

Core Linker Capabilities

  • LTO integration and performance improvements
  • Backward compatibility with existing embedded workflows
  • General linker optimizations focused on correctness and scalability

Target Enablement

  • Enable additional architectures and embedded targets
  • Support target‑specific features while keeping the core generic

Competitive Readiness and Usability

Performance and Scalability

  • Improve link‑time performance
  • Reduce peak memory usage during linking
  • Transparent comparisons with other linkers (code size, time, memory)

User Experience and Diagnostics

  • Clear, actionable diagnostics
  • Improved reproducibility and supportability
  • Richer and structured map file output

DeepMap Integration

  • Open‑source DeepMap for binary layout analysis
  • GUI and command‑line interfaces

Linker Plugin Ecosystem

  • Stable and extensible plugin APIs
  • Improved plugin diagnostics and observability
  • Encourage open‑source plugin development

Building Community Confidence

Testing and Quality

  • Open‑source CI workflows
  • Public build and test dashboards

Documentation

  • Clear release notes
  • Practical examples for embedded use cases

Community Engagement

  • Easy distribution and discoverability
  • Participation in LLVM and embedded communities
  • Conference talks, tutorials, and technical deep dives

Legend

  • Status: TBD (unknown / not yet validated), Planned, In Progress, Done
  • GNU ld / lld: TBD (unknown), Yes, No, Partial
  • Reference: link to upstream documentation (GNU ld manual / lld docs) or ELD docs

Note: The tables below use TBD as the default to avoid overstating compatibility until verified.

Command Line Support (Roadmap)

Page and Memory Layout

Option Description Status GNU ld lld Reference
-z common-page-size=SIZE Set common page size TBD TBD TBD
-z max-page-size=SIZE Set maximum page size TBD TBD TBD
-z stack-size=SIZE Set stack segment size TBD TBD TBD
-z separate-code Create separate code segment TBD TBD TBD
-z noseparate-code Disable separate code segment (default) TBD TBD TBD
--rosegment With -z separate-code, create a single read-only segment TBD TBD TBD
--no-rosegment With -z separate-code, create two read-only segments (default) TBD TBD TBD

Symbol Resolution and Definitions

Option Description Status GNU ld lld Reference
-z defs Report unresolved symbols in object files TBD TBD TBD
-z undefs Ignore unresolved symbols in object files TBD TBD TBD
-z muldefs Allow multiple definitions TBD TBD TBD
-z unique-symbol Avoid duplicated local symbol names TBD TBD TBD
-z nounique-symbol Keep duplicated local symbol names (default) TBD TBD TBD
-z common Generate common symbols with STT_COMMON type TBD TBD TBD
-z nocommon Generate common symbols with STT_OBJECT type TBD TBD TBD

Runtime Linking and Loading

Option Description Status GNU ld lld Reference
-z global Make symbols in DSO available for subsequently loaded objects TBD TBD TBD
-z initfirst Mark DSO to be initialized first at runtime TBD TBD TBD
-z interpose Mark object to interpose all DSOs but executable TBD TBD TBD
-z unique Mark DSO to be loaded at most once by default TBD TBD TBD
-z nounique Don't mark DSO as loadable at most once TBD TBD TBD
-z lazy Mark object lazy runtime binding (default) TBD TBD TBD
-z now Mark object non-lazy runtime binding TBD TBD TBD
-z loadfltr Mark object requiring immediate process TBD TBD TBD
-z origin Mark object requiring immediate $ORIGIN TBD TBD TBD

Security and Hardening

Option Description Status GNU ld lld Reference
-z execstack Mark executable as requiring executable stack TBD TBD TBD
-z noexecstack Mark executable as not requiring executable stack TBD TBD TBD
-z relro Create RELRO program header TBD TBD TBD
-z norelro Don't create RELRO program header (default) TBD TBD TBD
-z text Treat DT_TEXTREL in output as error TBD TBD TBD
-z notext Don't treat DT_TEXTREL in output as error (default) TBD TBD TBD
-z textoff Don't treat DT_TEXTREL in output as error (default) TBD TBD TBD
-z memory-seal Mark object to be memory sealed TBD TBD TBD
-z nomemory-seal Don't mark object to be memory sealed (default) TBD TBD TBD

Linker Behavior and Miscellaneous

Option Description Status GNU ld lld Reference
-z globalaudit Mark executable requiring global auditing TBD TBD TBD
-z start-stop-gc Enable garbage collection on __start/__stop TBD TBD TBD
-z nostart-stop-gc Don't garbage collect __start/__stop (default) TBD TBD TBD
-z start-stop-visibility=V Set visibility of built-in __start/__stop symbols TBD TBD TBD
-z sectionheader Generate section header (default) TBD TBD TBD
-z nosectionheader Do not generate section header TBD TBD TBD
-z combreloc Merge dynamic relocs into one section and sort TBD TBD TBD
-z nocombreloc Don't merge dynamic relocs into one section TBD TBD TBD
-z nocopyreloc Don't create copy relocs TBD TBD TBD
-z nodefaultlib Mark object not to use default search paths TBD TBD TBD
-z nodelete Mark DSO non-deletable at runtime TBD TBD TBD
-z nodlopen Mark DSO not available to dlopen TBD TBD TBD
-z nodump Mark DSO not available to dldump TBD TBD TBD

Linker Script Features (Roadmap)

Feature Priority Status GNU ld lld Reference
--enable-non-contiguous-regions Nice to have TBD TBD TBD
CLASS feature Low TBD TBD TBD
OVERLAY Nice to have TBD TBD TBD
OVERWRITE_SECTIONS Low TBD TBD TBD
INPUT_SECTION_FLAGS Nice to have TBD TBD TBD
REVERSE sort policy Low TBD TBD TBD
Version script complete support Nice to have TBD TBD TBD
ASCIZ/ASCIIZ output section data Low TBD TBD TBD
STARTUP Low TBD TBD TBD
NEXT Low TBD TBD TBD
OUTPUT_SECTION READONLY Low TBD TBD TBD
Output section TYPE=<value> Low TBD TBD TBD
LD_FEATURE Nice to have TBD TBD TBD
INSERT AFTER/BEFORE Nice to have TBD TBD TBD
SIZEOF_HEADERS Nice to have TBD TBD TBD

Linker Plugins (Roadmap)

Task Priority Status GNU ld lld Reference
Improve plugin framework APIs (usability) Nice to have TBD N/A N/A
Diagnose plugin behavior and issues Must TBD N/A N/A
Tutorials and demos for plugins Must TBD N/A N/A
Run plugins in parallel Nice to have TBD N/A N/A
Inter-plugin communication Nice to have TBD N/A N/A
Map-file customization via plugins Nice to have TBD N/A N/A
Plugin-customized linker script commands Nice to have TBD N/A N/A

Build Dashboard (Roadmap)

Capability Priority Status GNU ld lld Reference
Open-source dashboard for build workflows using ELD Must TBD N/A N/A
Filters for pass/fail statistics Must TBD N/A N/A
Server-less dashboard accessible to the open-source community Must TBD N/A N/A
Summarized build stats surfaced on GitHub repo home page Must TBD N/A N/A
Interactive drill-down into failures/issues Must TBD N/A N/A
Scripts/docs to record build stats in any workflow Nice to have TBD N/A N/A

DeepMap (Roadmap)

Capability Priority Status GNU ld lld Reference
Improve plugin APIs for detailed binary map recording Must TBD N/A N/A
DeepMap GUI app for build/image analysis Must TBD N/A N/A
Record detailed binary map (bitsery serialization) Must TBD N/A N/A
Read ELF files in DeepMap Must TBD N/A N/A
Read JSON files in DeepMap Nice to have TBD N/A N/A
Documentation for DeepMap Must TBD N/A N/A
Update DeepMap plugin to integrate with bitsery Must TBD N/A N/A
Custom Python APIs for binary map Must TBD N/A N/A
Python command-line tools for binary map Must TBD N/A N/A
Build/image diff tool Nice to have TBD N/A N/A
GUI support for common use cases (Zephyr/Modem) Must TBD N/A N/A
DeepMap VSCode extension Must TBD N/A N/A
Open-source DeepMap app Must TBD N/A N/A