[lld] [lld/ELF] Add documentation on large sections (PR #82560)

Fangrui Song via llvm-commits llvm-commits at lists.llvm.org
Wed Feb 21 17:52:13 PST 2024


================
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+Large sections
+==============
+
+When linking very large binaries, lld may report relocation overflows like
+
+::
+
+  relocation R_X86_64_PC32 out of range: 2158227201 is not in [-2147483648, 2147483647]
+
+This happens when running into architectural limitations. For example, in x86-64
+PIC code, a reference to a static global variable is typically done with a
+``R_X86_64_PC32`` relocation, which is a 32-bit signed offset from the PC. That
+means if the global is laid out further than 2GB (2^31 bytes) from the
+instruction referencing it, we run into a relocation overflow.
+
+Some code models offer a tradeoff between relocation pressure and performance.
+For example, x86-64's medium code model splits globals into small and large
+globals depending on if they are over a certain size. Large globals are placed
+further away from text and we use 64-bit references to refer to them.
+
+Large globals are placed in separate sections from small globals, and those
+sections have a "large" section flag, e.g. ``SHF_X86_64_LARGE`` for x86-64. The
+linker places large sections on the outer edges of the binary, making sure they
+do not affect affect the distance of small globals to text. The large versions
+of ``.rodata``, ``.bss``, and ``.data`` are ``.lrodata``, ``.lbss``, and
+``.ldata``, and they are laid out as follows:
+
+.. image:: large_sections_pic.png
+
+We try to keep the number of PT_LOAD segments to a minimum, so we place large
----------------
MaskRay wrote:

backticks around PT_LOAD

https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/82560


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