Gold linker ld.gold -plugin : unknown option - linker

Question

I'm trying to build Google's ligjingle following the Getting started steps, and I've reached the "Building" section.
When I issue either
ninja -C out/Debug
or
ninja -C out/Release
I get the following error :
I posted the output in pastebin too, if you prefer
ninja -C out/Debug
ninja: Entering directory `out/Debug'
[3/2606] LINK genmacro
FAILED: cc -Wl,-z,now -Wl,-z,relro -Wl,--fatal-warnings -pthread -Wl,-z,noexecstack -fPIC -B/home/nschoe/workspace/webrtc/jingle/trunk/third_party/binutils/Linux_x64/Release/bin -Wl,--disable-new-dtags -m64 -Wl,--icf=none -fuse-ld=gold -Wl,--gdb-index -o genmacro -Wl,--start-group obj/third_party/yasm/source/patched-yasm/tools/genmacro/genmacro.genmacro.o -Wl,--end-group
/home/nschoe/workspace/webrtc/jingle/trunk/third_party/binutils/Linux_x64/Release/bin/ld.gold: -plugin: unknown option
/home/nschoe/workspace/webrtc/jingle/trunk/third_party/binutils/Linux_x64/Release/bin/ld.gold: use the --help option for usage information
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
[3/2606] CC obj/net/third_party/nss/ssl/libssl.sslauth.o
ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.
I tried
ld.gold --help | grep "plugin"
and got :
--plugin PLUGIN Load a plugin library
--plugin-opt OPTION Pass an option to the plugin
So I suppose the error I'm getting is because somewhere in the code, ld.gold is called with -plugin xxx rather than --plugin xxx
I have been "playing" with grep -Hr and different combinations of "plugin" to try to find the problem, but so far I haven't found anything. I suppose it is hidden somewhere in a Makefile.

Answer 1

The problem is not that the -plugin option should be --plugin. ld.gold
accepts both options if it accepts either of them.
But it only accepts either of them if the build of binutils has been
configured with --enable-plugins. Documentation.
When you run ld.gold --help | grep "plugin" the output shows that --plugin is
a recognized option.
Therefore the problem appears to be this:-
/home/nschoe/workspace/webrtc/jingle/trunk/third_party/binutils/Linux_x64/Release/bin/ld.gold
has not been configured with --enable-plugins
When you run ld.gold --help | grep "plugin" you are executing the first ld.gold
that is found on your PATH. It is probably /usr/bin/ld.gold from your distro. You
can find out by running:
which ld.gold
Anyhow, it isn't
/home/nschoe/workspace/webrtc/jingle/trunk/third_party/binutils/Linux_x64/Release/bin/ld.gold
and it is an ld.gold that has been configured with --enable-plugins
If you cd into /home/nschoe/workspace/webrtc/jingle/trunk/third_party/binutils/Linux_x64/Release/bin/
and run:
./ld.gold -plugin
you will get:
./ld.gold: -plugin: unknown option
To fix the problem the ideal solution is to rebuild /home/nschoe/workspace/webrtc/jingle/trunk/third_party/binutils
as per that Documentation
If you cannot rebuild these third party binutils from source then it will
probably work if you just copy the system ld.gold detected by which over the one in the
third party binutils, or delete/rename the third party one and replace it with a symlink
to the system one. There is an outside chance that either of the these hacks
would cause you some obscure breakage.