Bug 1292230

Summary:	ld doesn't resolve symbols in linked to library
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7	Reporter:	Dave Johansen <davejohansen>
Component:	Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-7-en-US	Assignee:	Lenka Špačková <lkuprova>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:	Vladimír Slávik <vslavik>
Priority:	high
Version:	7.2	CC:	fweimer, law, lkuprova, nate.groendyk, nickc, ohudlick, rhel-docs, vslavik
Target Milestone:	rc	Keywords:	Documentation
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Deprecated Functionality
Doc Text:	Symbols from libraries linked as dependencies no longer resolved by ld Previously, the ld linker resolved any symbols present in any linked library, even if some libraries were linked only implicitly as dependencies of other libraries. This allowed developers to use symbols from the implicitly linked libraries in application code and omit explicitly specifying these libraries for linking. For security reasons, ld has been changed to not resolve references to symbols in libraries linked implicitly as dependencies. As a result, linking with ld fails when application code attempts to use symbols from libraries not declared for linking and linked only implicitly as dependencies. To use symbols from libraries linked as dependencies, developers must explicitly link against these libraries as well. To restore the previous behavior of ld, use the "-copy-dt-needed-entries" command-line option.	Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2018-01-09 10:42:32 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Dave Johansen 2015-12-16 19:22:44 UTC

Description of problem:
In RHEL 6, ld would resolve symbols in a library that were brought in from another library, but this is not the case in RHEL 7.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
binutils-2.23.52.0.1-55

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Download simple.c from https://github.com/markkilgard/glut/blob/master/progs/examples/simple.c
2. g++ simple.c -lglut -o simple

Actual results:
~> g++ simple.c -lglut -o simple
/usr/bin/ld: /tmp/ccPIpRiP.o: undefined reference to symbol 'glOrtho'
/usr/bin/ld: note: 'glOrtho' is defined in DSO /lib64/libGL.so.1 so try adding it to the linker command line
/lib64/libGL.so.1: could not read symbols: Invalid operation
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

Expected results:
Program links like it did in RHEL 6.

Additional info:
This is a regression from RHEL 6. Right now, the only solution that I know of is to explicitly add the second level libraries in the top level link. This is a painful process that will require a lot of changes to a lot of build processes out there.

Comment 2 Dave Johansen 2015-12-17 05:19:44 UTC

Apparently, this was an intended change:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/UnderstandingDSOLinkChange
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/ChangeInImplicitDSOLinking

I just looked through the release notes for RHEL 7 and didn't see anything about this, so could it please be documented, so others don't have to jump through all of the same hurdles that we do.

Comment 3 Jeff Law 2015-12-17 16:19:47 UTC

Correct.  This was an intentional change.  I thought I was documented somewhere already for RHEL 7.  It might be in the developer guide.  I'm reassigning to the doc folks to confirm its location.

Comment 5 Robert Krátký 2017-06-15 16:55:47 UTC

Apologies, this totally slipped through the net. The change should've been documented in the Release Notes for the respective version of RHEL. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, and -- on top of that -- I forgot about this bug. Feel free to yell at me -- that shouldn't have happened.

I'm now reassigning this to the Release Notes component, and we'll figure out how to deal with it. That is, we'll definitely add the info to the 7.2 Release Notes document, but we might also highlight it in the current or upcoming Release Notes. I'll leave that for Lenka's consideration.

Comment 13 Lenka Špačková 2017-10-30 12:36:02 UTC

Thank you all for the input. 

The doc text has been added to Release Notes for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 through 7.4 and will be carried over in the future minor releases (which we normally do with Deprecated Functionality descriptions).

Comment 16 Nathaniel Groendyk 2018-08-16 20:00:55 UTC

Is it possible to add a linker flag to ES6 to enforce explicit DSO linking (as is default in ES7?)

Comment 17 Nick Clifton 2018-08-17 10:07:57 UTC

(In reply to Nathaniel Groendyk from comment #16)
> Is it possible to add a linker flag to ES6 to enforce explicit DSO linking
> (as is default in ES7?)

Yes.  You can add the "--no-copy-dt-needed-entries" option to the linker command line.  Or if you are invoking the linker via gcc/g++ then "-Wl,--no-copy-dt-needed-entries" should do the trick.