With -pie and x86, the linker complains if it sees a PC-relative relocation
to access a global as it expects a GOTPCREL relocation. This is really not
necessary as the linker could use a copy relocation to get around it. This
patch enables copy relocations with pie.
Context:
This is useful because currently the GCC compiler with option -fpie makes
every extern global access go through the GOT. That is because the compiler
cannot tell if a global will end up being defined in the executable or not
and is conservative. This ends up hurting performance when the binary is linked
as mostly static where most of the globals do end up being defined in the
executable. By allowing copy relocs with fPIE, the compiler need not generate
a GOTPCREL(GOT access) for any global access. It can safely assume that all
globals will be defined in the executable and generate a PC-relative access
instead. Gold can then create a copy reloc for only the undefined globals.
Alan Modra
Sriraman Tallam