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zld is also the name of the drop-in, faster, portable version of Apple's linker that got merged into Zig https://github.com/kubkon/zld

Note: this zld is completely written in Zig and it is a good example of Zig codebase of moderate size and complexity.

The codebase seems remarkably small. I expected linkers to take a lot more effort to write.

And yet, thanks to zld, Zig is the only C/C++ compiler that can link Apple Silicon Mach0 when cross-compiling from another platform.

Maybe somewhere in there there's a source of difficulty that doesn't directly translate to lines of code.

A lot of the complexity stems from supporting multiple platforms/versions/optimizations/build configs, though. ld64/zld supports 300+ CLI flags...

Also, LLD in trunk can link for Apple Silicon too :)

I would like to see a runoff between the two zlds. May the best Zld win!