The __DATA,xray_instr_map section has label differences like
.quad Lxray_sled_0-Ltmp0 that is represented as a pair of UNSIGNED and SUBTRACTOR relocations.
LLVM integrated assembler attempts to rewrite A-B into A-B'+offset where B' can
be included in the symbol table. B' is called an atom and should be a
non-temporary symbol in the same section. However, since xray_instr_map does
not define a non-temporary symbol, the SUBTRACTO relocation will have no
associated symbol, and its r_extern value will be 0. Therefore, we will see
linker errors like:
error: SUBTRACTOR relocation must be extern at offset 0 of __DATA,xray_instr_map in a.o
To fix this issue, we need to define a non-temporary symbol in the section. We
can accomplish this by renaming Lxray_sleds_start0 to lxray_sleds_start0
("L" to "l").
lxray_sleds_start0 serves as the atom for this dead-strippable subsection.
With the S_ATTR_LIVE_SUPPORT attribute, ld -dead_strip will retain
subsections that reference live functions.
Special thanks to Oleksii Lozovskyi for reporting the issue and providing
initial analysis.