In glibc, libc.so is a linker script with an as-needed dependency on ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
GROUP ( /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc_nonshared.a AS_NEEDED ( /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 ) )
ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (as-needed) defines some symbols which resolve undefined references in libc.so.6, it will therefore be added as a DT_NEEDED entry, which isn't necessary.
The test case as-needed-not-in-regular.s emulates the libc.so scenario, where ld.bfd and gold don't add DT_NEEDED for a.so
The relevant code in gold/resolve.cc:
// If we have a non-WEAK reference from a regular object to a // dynamic object, mark the dynamic object as needed. if (to->is_from_dynobj() && to->in_reg() && !to->is_undef_binding_weak()) to->object()->set_is_needed();
in_reg() appears to do something similar to IsUsedInRegularObj.
This patch makes lld do the similar thing, but moves the check from
addShared to a later stage MarkLive where all symbols are scanned.
This part of the logic seems a bit unnecessarily complicated (though I believe I wrote this.) Let's simplify this first.