Linking with gold does not search /usr/local/lib

[brson]

If it thinks it can rustc will link with the gold linker. Unfortunately ld.bfd and ld.gold do not search the same paths for libraries. The bfd linker looks in the runtime linker path, while gold does not. This creates a very confusing difference in behavior.

Original report.

[eddyb]

Like I said on the on the PR, this seems to be a distro/user bug, since it would affect everything using gold, not just rustc.

[birkenfeld]

How it can be a distro bug I'm not sure, if that's just the way that gold works.

Does any distro actually install gold as the default linker (ld)? There is usually a mechanism to switch to it, but it isn't the default.

By the way, since there usually is this mechanism, why not let that extend to Rust as well, and let the user choose by whatever is ld on their system?

[rprichard]

The title says /etc/local/lib. I think it should be /usr/local/lib?

[brson]

@rprichard updated the op. Thanks.

[alexcrichton]

Removing nomination/regression tags but leaving open as to why we reverted gold