Glibc 2.34 Will Provide More Helpful Linker Diagnostics

With the exciting "HWCAPS" feature of Glibc 2.33+ allowing for optimized versions of libraries to be more easily deployed on Linux systems, diagnosing issues around it can be a bit more complicated but on the way for Glibc 2.34 is a welcome improvement to help in such issues.

Merging this week for the dynamic link (ld.so) in Glibc 2.34 is a --list-diagnostics option. This new option will provide a system dump of information around the glibc-hwcaps sub-directory selection as well as IFUNC resolver operation and other CPU/system details. This can be useful for ensuring the desired HWCAPS path is actually being used on a given system and other information for diagnosing bugs or other problems with this more complicated handling but performance beneficial HWCAPS feature. The IFUNC "indirect function" resolver behavior is similarly important at run-time.

Long story short, Glibc 2.34's "--list-diagnostics" feature should come in handy with reporting various system/CPU information. More details on the diagnostics within this commit and this commit that added more CPU diagnostics information.

Now here's to hoping we see more Glibc-HWCAPS adoption in the months to come for helping squeeze more performance out-of-the-box on modern Linux systems...