this overhaul further reduces the amount of arch-specific code needed
by the dynamic linker and removes a number of assumptions, including:
- that symbolic function references inside libc are bound at link time
via the linker option -Bsymbolic-functions.
- that libc functions used by the dynamic linker do not require
access to data symbols.
- that static/internal function calls and data accesses can be made
without performing any relocations, or that arch-specific startup
code handled any such relocations needed.
removing these assumptions paves the way for allowing libc.so itself
to be built with stack protector (among other things), and is achieved
by a three-stage bootstrap process:
1. relative relocations are processed with a flat function.
2. symbolic relocations are processed with no external calls/data.
3. main program and dependency libs are processed with a
fully-functional libc/ldso.
reduction in arch-specific code is achived through the following:
- crt_arch.h, used for generating crt1.o, now provides the entry point
for the dynamic linker too.
- asm is no longer responsible for skipping the beginning of argv[]
when ldso is invoked as a command.
- the functionality previously provided by __reloc_self for heavily
GOT-dependent RISC archs is now the arch-agnostic stage-1.
- arch-specific relocation type codes are mapped directly as macros
rather than via an inline translation function/switch statement.
the main motivation for this change is to aid in debugging. since the
main program's entry point is also named _start, it was difficult to
set breakpoints or quickly identify which _start execution stopped in.
not heavily tested, but the basics are working. the basic concept is
that the dynamic linker entry point code invokes a pure-PIC (no global
accesses) C function in reloc.h to perform the early GOT relocations
needed to make the dynamic linker itself functional, then invokes
__dynlink like on other archs. since mips uses some ugly arch-specific
hacks to optimize relocating the GOT (rather than just using the
normal DT_REL[A] tables like on other archs), the dynamic linker has
been modified slightly to support calling arch-specific relocation
code in reloc.h.
most of the actual mips-specific behavior was developed by reading the
output of readelf on libc.so and simple executable files. i could not
find good reference information on which relocation types need to be
supported or their semantics, so it's possible that some legitimate
usage cases will not work yet.
Rich Felker