linker identification issues when using zig as C compiler for meson based projects

[bo-nemk]

Zig Version

0.12.0-dev.414+461036069

Steps to Reproduce and Observed Behavior

In my understanding, meson build system has limited support for linkers. It seems to check what linker you are using with:

CC -Wl,--version

If it cannot find a supported linker, it will not build. As of now, it does not support the zig linker:

$ zig cc -Wl,--version
zig ld 0.12.0-dev.414+461036069

This is problematic, as meson can't handle this.

A typical workaround would be as follows.
When running this with clang (the zig compiler backend as I understand it), I obtain:

$ clang -Wl,--version
GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Debian) 2.40

Apparently, it's using ld. If hypothetically this is undesirable, this can be changed by specifying the linker directly:

$ clang -fuse-ld=lld -Wl,--version
Debian LLD 14.0.6 (compatible with GNU linkers) 

This trick doesn't work with zig, however:

$ zig cc -fuse-ld=lld -Wl,--version
zig ld 0.12.0-dev.414+461036069

Expected Behavior

For interop with meson, it would be nice if zig acted as clang does, i.e.:

$ zig cc -fuse-ld=lld -Wl,--version
Debian LLD 14.0.6 (compatible with GNU linkers) 

[bo-nemk]

Update: this is a duplicate of this issue.

[zpon]

@bo-nemk this issue is not resolved by 15549, as that doesn't add -fuse-ld AFAIK. This is particularly problematic when using zig in combination with cgo which requires the gold linker to be used: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/cmd/link/internal/ld/lib.go#L1624
Can this issue be reopened?

[jiridanek]

AFAIK the original problem leading to the bug report was indeed resolved, so reopening would not be appropriate. I'm instead going to open a new issue for -fuse-ld

• zig cc silently ignores -fuse-ld= option #18357