For years, the Mold linker has reigned as the undisputed speed champion in the Linux development ecosystem, leaving traditional LLVM (LLD) and GNU linkers in the dust. Now, a formidable challenger has emerged: Wild, a linker written entirely in Rust, designed not just to match Mold’s blistering performance but to surpass it—with ambitious plans to revolutionize iterative development through incremental linking.

Led by developer David Lattimore, Wild’s core mission addresses a critical gap in high-speed linking. While Mold excels at raw speed, its creator has explicitly ruled out supporting incremental linking—a technique that dramatically accelerates rebuilds by reusing unchanged object code. Wild aims to fill this void. As Lattimore explains:

"Mold is already very fast, however it doesn't do incremental linking and the author has stated that they don't intend to. Wild doesn't do incremental linking yet, but that is the end-goal. By writing Wild in Rust, it's hoped that the complexity of incremental linking will be achievable."

Rust’s memory safety guarantees and expressive type system, Lattimore suggests, provide the foundational rigor needed to implement incremental linking reliably—a task fraught with complexity in C++-based alternatives like Mold.

Early benchmarks underscore Wild’s potential. In tests across Linux x86_64, ARM64, and RISC-V targets, Wild not only outpaces LLD but also edges ahead of Mold in specific scenarios. The following result highlights Wild’s advantage in linking large projects:

Wild’s benchmark showing competitive performance against Mold and LLD (Source: Phoronix)

Currently, Wild remains a work in progress. It lacks support for non-Linux platforms, link-time optimization (LTO), and other advanced features. However, its Apache 2.0/MIT dual license and open GitHub repository invite collaboration. For developers wrestling with slow build times—especially in resource-constrained environments like embedded systems or massive codebases—Wild represents more than just another tool; it’s a glimpse into a future where linking ceases to be a development bottleneck. As the race for faster compilation intensifies, Wild’s Rust-driven approach might just redefine what’s possible.

Source: Phoronix