#weld

My biggest difficulty with linkers is… understanding their errors! I know I'm not alone.

That's why `weld` must be exemplary on errors, period.

Please welcome `weld-errors`, https://github.com/Hywan/weld/compare/b7fde2dbf9fb523dccb041063bfd030967f5e814...4a41bd666c6dc8b76a59bf7c127247312e84127e.

What's new?

* Any error contains a code, a (formatted) message, and a help message,
* `weld` pretty prints those errors,
* `weld --explain <error_code>` gives detailed diagnostics,
* Automatic awesome documentation.

See the screenshots.

#weld

`weld` now takes a `--target <triple>` argument. `weld` is designed to be cross-platform entirely, hence it's legit to be able to specify a target triple, https://github.com/Hywan/weld/commit/b7fde2dbf9fb523dccb041063bfd030967f5e814.

Based on the provided target triple, `weld` will use a particular linker strategy (e.g Elf, MachO, Coff, Wasm etc.).

$ weld --target x86-64-unknown-linux <input> -o <output> # = Elf

$ weld --target aarch64-apple-darwin <input> -o <output> # = MachO

Cool huh?

Yesterday, I’ve also added support for big- and little-endian. All parser combinators can now handle endianness based on a generic type + trait, https://github.com/Hywan/weld/commit/5a1ff9f9643fe6b82e7b789e4c2cca7ee6615024.

It’s magic. Rust is cool.

So far, I’m writing the Elf64 parser. The goal is to get zero copy, period.

Yesterday I’ve added section’s data and name, still with zero copy, https://github.com/Hywan/weld/blob/bfb9fd55c5b2f9114e8f8ab21c5f49d48f9c3b98/crates/parser/src/elf64/mod.rs#L720.

It relies heavily on Rust lifetimes, and bstr to get bytes-based string-ish. The parser is written with nom, and is manipulating bytes slices only.

bstr: https://blog.burntsushi.net/bstr/
nom: https://github.com/rust-bakery/nom