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Re: Preventing preemption of 'protected' symbols in GNU ld 2.26
- From: Cary Coutant <ccoutant at gmail dot com>
- To: Joe Groff <jgroff at apple dot com>
- Cc: "H.J. Lu" <hjl dot tools at gmail dot com>, Binutils <binutils at sourceware dot org>
- Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 15:21:59 -0700
- Subject: Re: Preventing preemption of 'protected' symbols in GNU ld 2.26
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <9106B2FB-BB06-413A-A04D-EEFB992784FA at apple dot com> <CAJimCsEzZ8GDByd8r9x5J9sQ__V0o1mn21FD1xLPe7OhWdikKQ at mail dot gmail dot com> <CAMe9rOqipnAMa-OeYfks6=FYRffxSrcLuJnJD=wX-PjoKcGWRA at mail dot gmail dot com> <CAJimCsFxza3TWVXorqYLa--SfUZ_LznR=m2GkJ_Mq6YZ9Ga3YQ at mail dot gmail dot com> <CAMe9rOphSdEp8mO7OpuEAVpUz-hT8eRb=6RJmaP1XWvDC_UNpQ at mail dot gmail dot com> <CAJimCsHGnHp+s4OXVMt5K=AOsz=nPqY_W7L_M0Ey5rSdK7nk1g at mail dot gmail dot com> <CAMe9rOowzNKqmgf+5A6R-BdEjv2_KAnEYO=PxUH6=MYST_Fu3w at mail dot gmail dot com> <9EFBBDCE-4054-4867-B3E9-9DFE216A234F at apple dot com> <CAMe9rOqqPVeaRZ8SPD-uoxRnHFOCGV3xXFNnDY5ez6xY8uG6hw at mail dot gmail dot com> <CAJimCsFffshMvsDoRq_33Ss8u9Y_Z4y2NKsqDbxJQuO6SyJNbg at mail dot gmail dot com> <CAMe9rOqcw2P_ZU2u-mQ5m7wrVygLKxD3R=KwkxdpiXkeM6o_2g at mail dot gmail dot com> <BC969B3B-87A2-4238-90C8-DA2E166707AF at apple dot com>
> Did you look at what the costs were in startup time and dirty pages by using
> copy relocations? What do you do if the size of the definition changes in a
> new version of the library?
There wouldn't be a measurable cost in dirty pages; the copied objects
are simply allocated in bss in the executable.
Startup time wasn't a concern either, simply because COPY relocations
weren't the real issue. We had to support an *occasional* COPY
relocation in order to enable -fPIE to access globals directly rather
than through the GOT. These would be the same COPY relocations that
the apps would have already been using in non-PIE mode (things like
stdin, stdout, and stderr, e.g.).
The size of an object is baked into the ABI when a COPY relocation is
used, so any change in size is an ABI change (often handled, as HJ
pointed out, with versioning). For a lot of common COPY relocations,
that's not really an issue, because both the size and the layout are
baked in through macros like putc() and getc().
-cary