[all-commits] [llvm/llvm-project] 6736bc: [lld-macho] Private label aliases to weak symbols ...

[Jez Ng via All-commits]

  Branch: refs/heads/main
  Home:   https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project
  Commit: 6736bce6db5fe15bcb765b976c99fff34500d1eb
      https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/6736bce6db5fe15bcb765b976c99fff34500d1eb
  Author: Jez Ng <jezng at fb.com>
  Date:   2022-12-01 (Thu, 01 Dec 2022)

  Changed paths:
    M lld/MachO/InputFiles.cpp
    M lld/MachO/UnwindInfoSection.cpp
    A lld/test/MachO/weak-def-alias-private-label.s

  Log Message:
  -----------
  [lld-macho] Private label aliases to weak symbols should not retain section data

If we have two files with the same weak symbol like so:

```
ltmp0:
_weak:
  <contents>
```
and

```
ltmp1:
_weak:
  <contents>
```

Linking them together should leave only one copy of `<contents>`, not
two. Previously, we would keep around both copies because of the
private-label `ltmp<N>` symbols (i.e. symbols that start with `l`) -- we
would not coalesce those, so we would treat them as retaining the
contents.

This matters for more than just size -- we are depending upon this
behavior internally for emitting a certain file format. This file
format's header is repeated in each object file, but we want it to
appear just once in our output.

Why can't we not emit those aliases to `_weak`, or reference the
`ltmp<N>` symbols instead of `_weak`? Well, MC actually adds `ltmp<N>`
symbols as part of the assembly-to-binary translation step. So any
codegen at the clang level can't access them.

All that said... this solution is actually kind of hacky. Here, we avoid
creating the private-label symbols at parse time. This is acceptable
since we never emit those symbols in our output. However, in ld64, any
aliasing temporary symbols (ignored or otherwise) won't retain coalesced
data. But implementing this is harder -- we would have to create those
symbols first (so we can emit their names later), but we would have to
ensure the linker correctly shuffles them around when their aliasees get
coalesced.

Additionally, ld64 treats these temporary symbols as functionally
equivalent to the weak symbols themselves -- that is, it will emit weak
binds when those non-weak temporary aliases are referenced. We have
imitated this behavior for private-label symbols, but implementing it for
local aliases in general seems substantially more difficult. I'm not
sure if any programs actually depend on this behavior though, so maybe
it's a moot point.

Finally, ld64 does all this regardless of whether
`.subsections_via_symbols` is specified. We don't. But again, given how
rare the lack of that directive is (I've only seen it from hand-written
assembly inputs), I don't think we need to worry about it.

Reviewed By: #lld-macho, oontvoo

Differential Revision: https://reviews.llvm.org/D139069