Wild is a linker written in Rust that prioritizes speed for iterative development on Linux.
The tool addresses the need for faster linking during development cycles. While incremental linking is planned as a future feature, Wild already achieves significant speed improvements over traditional linkers even without that capability. It functions as a drop-in replacement for standard linkers, integrating with GCC and Clang through multiple invocation methods including the `-fuse-ld=wild` flag and `--ld-path` options.
Developers should choose Wild if they are building Rust, C, or C++ projects on Linux and want to reduce link-time overhead. The tool supports x86-64, ARM64, RISC-V, LoongArch64, and PPC64LE architectures. It integrates directly with Cargo through configuration files and works with CMake 4.4 or later when using compatible compiler versions. The README mentions Mold as an existing fast linker alternative but notes that Mold does not support incremental linking, whereas Wild has that as an explicit goal.
The project's issue tracker is primarily driven by internal planning rather than external user demand, with most issues raised by the maintainers themselves. Responses to new issues and pull requests typically arrive within a day. Development effort concentrates on support for Mach-O binaries, WebAssembly, and link-time optimization.
