DragonFlyBSD 4.4 Switches To the Gold Linker By Default

An anonymous reader writes: DragonFlyBSD 4.4 is now available for download (x86_64 ISO) and is a feature release that presents many improvements and new features. DragonFlyBSD now uses the Gold Linker by default rather than GNU Ld, updates the Intel and Radeon graphics support against the Linux 3.18 kernel, improves its experimental HAMMER2 file-system updates the locale system and provides collation for named locales, changes out its regex library, and has new hardware drivers. More details on the 4.4 release page.

Have they moved to LLVM/Clang?

[unixisc]

Just wondering 2 things:

1. Are they going to LLVM/Clang, like FreeBSD has?

2. Are they implementing Wayland?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

3. When will it support the gold-standard systemd?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

3. When will it support the gold-standard systemd?

"Gold standard"? ... ... ... Bwhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa.

Re:Have they moved to LLVM/Clang?

[m.dillon]

LLVM/Clang builds the DragonFly world and kernel but does not yet build the boot loader. It can be brought in via dports. So it isn't 100% yet but very close. When it does get to 100% it will become one of our two officially supported compilers. Those are currently gcc-4.7 and gcc-5.2.1.

Wayland support isn't really up to us, but there is wayland support in XOrg that I think works for programs desiring to use that API. Don't quote me on it though.

-Matt

Re:

[fnj]

Nice to see gcc 5.2.1 supported! Linux distros and BSDs relying on prehistoric gcc versions always bummed me out.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

Out of interest why the move from the old to the new linker?

I assume there is an advantage as GNU have adopted gold as a project even though it's rather less featureful than its predecessor. I hear things like it's faster, especially for large programs. Is this why you switched?

I'd be very interested to hear what motivated the change

Re:

[scruffy]

LLVM/Clang builds the DragonFly world and kernel but does not yet build the boot loader. It can be brought in via dports. So it isn't 100% yet but very close. When it does get to 100% it will become one of our two officially supported compilers. Those are currently gcc-4.7 and gcc-5.2.1.

Wayland support isn't really up to us, but there is wayland support in XOrg that I think works for programs desiring to use that API. Don't quote me on it though.

-Matt

Ok, got it. No quoting.

Re:

[laffer1]

Nothing is stopping AMD from supporting BSD like NVIDIA does. This is a vendor fail and I buy NVIDIA cards to support their BSD efforts even if it is only FreeBSD.

Congratulations Matt

[joelsherrill]

Nice to see a new release.

Looking forward to Hammer2

[fnj]

Do we have any expected timeframe for when Hammer2 will become the default?

Re:

[phoenix_rizzen]

Approx 3 weeks after it's complete, tested, and ready for day-to-day use. ;)