In toolchain-binutils.eclass line 243 (handling of the gold linker) # enable gold if available (installed as ld.gold) if use cxx ; then if grep -q 'enable-gold=default' "${S}"/configure ; then myconf+=( --enable-gold ) # old ways - remove when 2.21 is stable elif grep -q 'enable-gold=both/ld' "${S}"/configure ; then myconf+=( --enable-gold=both/ld ) elif grep -q 'enable-gold=both/bfd' "${S}"/configure ; then myconf+=( --enable-gold=both/bfd ) fi if grep -q -e '--enable-plugins' "${S}"/ld/configure ; then myconf+=( --enable-plugins ) fi fi The commend 'old ways ...' suggest that it follows legacy code for binutils prior to binutils-2.21. As the current minimum version of binutils in portage is 2.21.1-r1, someone with better knowledge than me should judge if these old ways are still needed or if they can be removed.
Not sure if it is orphaned. This clause might be applicable to binutils-hppa64 which maintains versions 2.19 and 2.20
HPPA doesn't build a gold linker at all, regardless of whether the configure script says it can. That means --enable-gold is set anyway and then later disregarded by the build system. I guess the eclass code is still valid for anyone using binutils <2.21.
(In reply to tiage from comment #0) toolchain-binutils is used for versions back to 2.14. grab the toolchain overlay if you want those versions. (In reply to Jeroen Roovers from comment #2) a bunch of arch ports don't support gold (like hppa). the binutils system silently ignores things if it isn't supported for the target in question which is fine ... throwing an error isn't terribly useful.
