[AARCH64] question about RELA relocations

[weixiangyu]

Hello,sorry to bother you, but I have some confusion about the RELA relocation.
As we know, RELA means relocation entries with addends.Then my question is:
If we use RELA,can we say that the offset will be 100 percent put into addend?

Considering the following testcase:

**************************************************************
#include <stdlib.h>
#define __test_section __attribute__((__section__(".data.test_section")))

static unsigned long flags __test_section;
static int *test __test_section;

unsigned long test1(void)
{
test = NULL;
return 0;
}

unsigned long test2(void)
{
//const volatile unsigned long *addr = &flags;
const unsigned long *addr = &flags;
return *addr;
}

**************************************************************
My toolchain is aarch64_be-linux-gnu cross compiler based on gcc-4.9.3 and binutils-2.24.

Execute the following command:
aarch64_be-linux-gnu-gcc -c test.c -O2 -dp
aarch64_be-linux-gnu-readelf -r test.o > readelf_r

The relocation information is as follows:
We can see that the offset of the global variable "flags" is put into Addend,and as my understanding,this is the right way of RELA relocations

*********************************************************************************
Relocation section '.rela.text' at offset 0x538 contains 4 entries:
  Offset          Info           Type           Sym. Value    Sym. Name + Addend
000000000000  000600000113 R_AARCH64_ADR_PRE 0000000000000000 .data.test_section + 0
000000000008  00060000011e R_AARCH64_LDST64_ 0000000000000000 .data.test_section + 0
000000000010  000600000113 R_AARCH64_ADR_PRE 0000000000000000 .data.test_section + 8
000000000014  00060000011e R_AARCH64_LDST64_ 0000000000000000 .data.test_section + 8
*********************************************************************************

But when "addr" is prefixed with the keyword "volatile" ,then the relocation would look like this:
*********************************************************************************
Relocation section '.rela.text' at offset 0x538 contains 4 entries:
  Offset          Info           Type           Sym. Value    Sym. Name + Addend
000000000000  000600000113 R_AARCH64_ADR_PRE 0000000000000000 .data.test_section + 0
000000000008  00060000011e R_AARCH64_LDST64_ 0000000000000000 .data.test_section + 0
000000000010  000600000113 R_AARCH64_ADR_PRE 0000000000000000 .data.test_section + 0
000000000014  000600000115 R_AARCH64_ADD_ABS 0000000000000000 .data.test_section + 0
*********************************************************************************
The addend is zero.

Get the assemble output of the two situations with the following command:
aarch64_be-linux-gnu-gcc -S test.c -O2 -dp -o test.s

the assemble output without "volatile":
************************************************************************************
test2:
        adrp    x0, .LANCHOR0+8 // 6    *movdi_aarch64/10       [length = 4]
        ldr     x0, [x0,#:lo12:.LANCHOR0+8]     // 12   *movdi_aarch64/5        [length = 4]
        ret     // 20   *do_return      [length = 4]
        .size   test2, .-test2
        .section        .data.test_section,"aw",%progbits
        .align  3
.LANCHOR0 = . + 0
        .type   test, %object
        .size   test, 8
************************************************************************************


the assemble output with "volatile":
************************************************************************************
test2:
        adrp    x0, .LANCHOR0   // 5    *movdi_aarch64/10       [length = 4]
        add     x0, x0, :lo12:.LANCHOR0 // 6    add_losym_di    [length = 4]
        ldr     x0, [x0,8]      // 7    *movdi_aarch64/5        [length = 4]
        ret     // 20   *do_return      [length = 4]
        .size   test2, .-test2
        .section        .data.test_section,"aw",%progbits
        .align  3
.LANCHOR0 = . + 0
        .type   test, %object
        .size   test, 8
************************************************************************************