I initially had the same question but seeing the author’s comments on this feature (which are generally positive) I personally have come to the conclusion that it is a misfeature.
LTO is not necessary for development builds, or builds where the speed of the write-compile-test loop matter. This is exactly the use case that mold was designed for and it is designed well. Adding LTO support would only add bloat to the code especially since mold’s techniques to improve the efficiency of linking don’t really apply to LTO (where link time is dominated by whole program analysis). I have no issue using the compiler’s native linker when doing production LTO builds and conceptually that makes more sense to me anyway.
I would prefer it if the author avoided features when doing so benefits innovating on the core use case.
