Created attachment 7770 [details]
testcase

The attached testcase has a .init_array that is in a comdat.

With gold

$ ~/binutils/build/gold/ld-new -shared -o test.so test.o
$ readelf  -x .init_array test.so

Hex dump of section '.init_array':
  0x00001468 90020000 00000000                   ........

$ readelf -sDW test.so | grep FUNC
    1   0: 0000000000000290     1 FUNC    WEAK   DEFAULT   7 f

That is, .init_array points to the function f, as expected.

With bfd ld:

$ ~/binutils/build/ld/ld-new -shared -o test.so test.o
[espindola@localhost llvm]$ readelf  -x .init_array test.so

Hex dump of section '.init_array':
  0x00200268 00000000 00000000                   ........

The section has a null.


As to why this is useful: In C++ when doing static initialization of a variable in a comdat we can put the .init_array in that comdat. That way the linker should keep only one copy.