Re: Preventing preemption of 'protected' symbols in GNU ld 2.26 [aka should we revert the fix for 65248]

[Cary Coutant <ccoutant@gmail.com>]

>> Given a shared library that defines a variable, and a non-PIC
>> executable that references that variable, the linker makes a duplicate
>> of the variable in the executable .dynbss section and arranges to have
>> the copy initialized by the dynamic loader with a copy relocation.
>> .dynbss is a linker created section that becomes part of the
>> executable bss segment.  The idea is that at run-time both the
>> executable and the shared library will use the executable copy of the
>> variable.  It's a rather ancient linker hack to avoid dynamic text
>> relocations, invented well before symbol visibility.
>
> So what other choice does the linker have here?  AFAICS it's wrong
> to create the .dynbss copy for protected symbols.  So why not
> simply create 'dynamic text relocations' then?  Is that possible with
> a pure linker change?

Ugh. Besides being a bad idea from a performance point of view, it's
not even always possible to do. Depending on the architecture, a
direct reference from an executable to a variable in a shared library
may not have the necessary reach.

> That said, correctness trumps optimization.  A correctness fix that
> works with old objects trumps one that requires a compiler change.
> Requiring a compiler change to get back optimization while preserving
> correctness is fine.

When the whole point of a feature is to enable a particular
optimization, the missed optimization *is* a correctness issue.

Symbol visibility is not a standard language feature. It's an
extension that many compilers provide to give access to an ELF/gABI
feature, and it comes with limitations. When the only way to eliminate
those limitations is to disable the intended optimization, the only
real choices are to live with the limitations (i.e., issue an error
when we would need a COPY relocation for a protected symbol), or to
forgo the extension altogether.

-cary