Add support for windows linker args by n1ght-hunter · Pull Request #1670 · wild-linker/wild

n1ght-hunter · 2026-03-09T04:37:21Z

Requires #1629 to be merged before this can.

This pr adds windows style flags to the args parsing.
It also moves linux flags to linux modules.
This introduces target-lexicon as a new dep. for parsing -target which follows the llvm target triple spec.

Questions to be answered.

do we want the new sub modules. args/linux and args/windows. i like having the modules.
should they be named after the os or the output type. i.e. switch linux to elf and windows to coff or pe
the args/consts needs more thought. these mainly apply to elf only so perhaps should move removed and consts moved into either args.rs or linux.rs
do we want to use target-lexicon types more heavily. currently they are mapped to local types i.e. target_lexicon::Architecture -> lib_wild::Architecture. these could be removed from lib_wild and just use target-lexicon but that would mean matching on Architecture will have to match for Architecture's not supported by wild

wild/src/main.rs

n1ght-hunter · 2026-03-09T04:49:26Z

libwild/src/args.rs

-            arch: default_target_arch(),
+            // Infrastructure
+            should_fork: true,
+            arch: const { Architecture::from_target_lexicon(target_lexicon::HOST.architecture) },


the default should probably be the build target architecture not the build host

davidlattimore · 2026-03-09T07:45:36Z

libwild/src/args/consts.rs

I'd prefer not to have a separate file for consts. We don't do that kind of thing elsewhere. It's a bit like having a module called "traits". It looks like these constants are a mix of ELF-specific constants and constants that should just be in the top-level args module.

davidlattimore · 2026-03-09T07:48:19Z

libwild/src/args/linux.rs

Github is showing the entire file as new, which means we can't see what has changed. I'd say either leave all the linux argument parsing in args.rs, or we could do a PR before this one where we just copy the file and don't edit it.

davidlattimore · 2026-03-09T07:57:04Z

libwild/src/args.rs

+/// - `-m <emulation>` — overrides format to ELF when present
+///
+/// Priority: `-m` overrides format from `--target`. Architecture comes from `--target` only.
+pub(crate) fn detect_target(args: &[String]) -> Result<DetectedTarget> {


I think the --target flag might be too much for this PR, especially since it's non-standard. I worry that the discussion might get bogged down. What about splitting that to a later PR and for this one just accepting --flavor gnu or --flavor link as the first argument like LLD does?

davidlattimore · 2026-03-09T08:07:44Z

libwild/src/args/windows.rs

+        .long("APPCONTAINER")
+        .help("/APPCONTAINER - Specifies whether the app must run within an appcontainer process environment.")
+        .execute(|_, _| unimplemented_option("/APPCONTAINER"));
+    // /ARM64XFUNCTIONPADMINX64 - Specifies the minimum number of bytes of padding between x64 functions in ARM64X images. 17.8


The comments seem to duplicate the help text. Also, they seem to be copied from Microsoft. I suspect for copyright reasons, we need to come up with our own descriptions of each flag. For unimplemented flags, it'd be fine to have the help text just say "unimplemented" and we can fill in our own descriptions as we implement them.

davidlattimore · 2026-03-09T08:08:52Z

libwild/src/args/windows.rs

+        r#"C:\Users\Samuel\AppData\Local\Temp\rustc7RL5Io\symbols.o"#,
+        "dummy.dummy.6cfbe55db138f4b-cgu.0.rcgu.o",
+        "dummy.3wxfnlvokcqcl6j45c8xeicgz.rcgu.o",
+        r#"C:\Users\Samuel\.rustup\toolchains\stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc\lib\rustlib\x86_64-pc-windows-msvc\lib\libstd-efa6c7783284bd31.rlib"#,


Perhaps edit these lines to make them a bit shorter.

n1ght-hunter · 2026-03-12T06:45:58Z

im pretty busy with work stuff but will get to this over the weekend

mati865

Few things I noticed during a quick skim through this PR.

mati865 · 2026-03-13T12:45:13Z

libwild/src/args/windows.rs

+    pub(crate) nx_compat: bool,
+    pub(crate) terminal_server_aware: bool,
+    pub(crate) high_entropy_va: bool,
+    pub(crate) no_default_libs: Vec<String>,


This looks like GNU's -nodefaultlibs but works very differently. I'd suggest renaming it to disabled_default_libs or something like that.

mati865 · 2026-03-13T12:46:11Z

libwild/src/args/windows.rs

+/// and PE-specific fields are accessible via `Deref`/`DerefMut`.
+#[derive(Debug)]
+pub struct PeArgs {
+    // Windows-specific fields


This comment doesn't seem useful - looks like it applies to all struct fields.

mati865 · 2026-03-13T13:01:42Z

libwild/src/args/linux.rs

+    if std::env::var(REFERENCE_LINKER_ENV).is_ok() {
+        args.write_layout = true;
+        args.write_trace = true;
+    }


mati865 · 2026-03-13T13:05:12Z

libwild/src/args/windows.rs

+    let files_per_group: Option<u32> = std::env::var(FILES_PER_GROUP_ENV)
+        .ok()
+        .map(|s| s.parse())
+        .transpose()?;
+
+    if let Some(x) = files_per_group {
+        ensure!(
+            x <= MAX_FILES_PER_GROUP,
+            "{FILES_PER_GROUP_ENV}={x} but maximum is {MAX_FILES_PER_GROUP}"
+        );
+    }
+


mati865 · 2026-03-13T13:06:54Z

libwild/src/args/windows.rs

+}
+
+pub(crate) fn setup_windows_argument_parser() -> ArgumentParser<PeArgs> {
+    // Helper function for unimplemented options


LLMs create unnecessary verbose comments for obvious things like this one. They only needlessly make files longer.

mati865 · 2026-03-13T13:11:41Z

libwild/src/args/windows.rs

+    use crate::args::InputSpec;
+    use std::path::Path;
+
+    // Example Windows linker flags from Rust compilation


This is misleading, Rust doesn't pass --target to the linkers. Using synthetic command line arguments rather than real-world will be easier to deal with.

mati865 · 2026-03-13T13:14:08Z

libwild/src/args/windows.rs

+        assert!(args.debug_info); // /DEBUG flag
+        assert!(args.nx_compat); // /NXCOMPAT flag


Comments like that are not useful.

mati865 · 2026-03-13T13:20:34Z

libwild/Cargo.toml

 linker-layout = { path = "../linker-layout", version = "0.8.0" }
 linker-trace = { path = "../linker-trace", version = "0.8.0" }
 linker-utils = { path = "../linker-utils", version = "0.8.0" }
+target-lexicon = { workspace = true }


Move it near to other t.. deps.

mati865 · 2026-03-13T13:21:11Z

Cargo.toml

 leb128 = "0.2.5"
 libc = "0.2.171"
 libloading = "0.9.0"
+target-lexicon = "0.13.5"


mati865 · 2026-03-13T13:25:30Z

libwild/src/args.rs

        }
    }

-    fn declare(&mut self) -> OptionDeclaration<'_, NoParam> {
+    #[must_use]
+    pub fn new_case_insensitive() -> Self {


This is link.exe variant, not just case-insensitive.

n1ght-hunter · 2026-03-13T13:35:08Z

Few things I noticed during a quick skim through this PR.

thanks so much. will should be able to clean it all up tm. i was hoping to have more time but work had some major issues that took up my time

davidlattimore reviewed Mar 9, 2026

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wild/src/main.rs Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

n1ght-hunter commented Mar 9, 2026

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n1ght-hunter force-pushed the push-mmnvvqsnqxtl branch from f5586b2 to 49fd37a Compare March 9, 2026 05:02

Add support for windows linker args

e841eb9

n1ght-hunter force-pushed the push-mmnvvqsnqxtl branch from 49fd37a to e841eb9 Compare March 9, 2026 05:10

davidlattimore reviewed Mar 9, 2026

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mati865 mentioned this pull request Mar 9, 2026

Windows support #1653

Draft

mati865 reviewed Mar 13, 2026

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		assert!(args.debug_info); // /DEBUG flag
		assert!(args.nx_compat); // /NXCOMPAT flag

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n1ght-hunter commented Mar 9, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

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n1ght-hunter commented Mar 12, 2026

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n1ght-hunter commented Mar 13, 2026

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n1ght-hunter commented Mar 9, 2026 •

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