As of binutils 2.32, ld has a bogus TLS relaxation error when the GD/LD
code sequence using R_X86_64_GOTPCREL (instead of R_X86_64_GOTPCRELX) is
attempted to be relaxed to IE/LE (binutils PR24784). gold and lld are good.
In gcc/config/i386/i386.md, there is a configure-time check of as/ld
support and the GOT relaxation will not be used if as/ld doesn't support
it:
if (flag_plt || !HAVE_AS_IX86_TLS_GET_ADDR_GOT) return "call\t%P2"; return "call\t{*%p2@GOT(%1)|[DWORD PTR %p2@GOT[%1]]}";
In clang, -DENABLE_X86_RELAX_RELOCATIONS=OFF is the default. The ld.bfd
bogus error can be reproduced with:
thread_local int a; int main() { return a; }
clang -fno-plt -fpic a.cc -fuse-ld=bfd
GOTPCRELX gained relative good support in 2016, which is considered
relatively new. It is even difficult to conditionally default to
-DENABLE_X86_RELAX_RELOCATIONS=ON due to cross compilation reasons. So
work around the ld.bfd bug by only using GOT when GOTPCRELX is enabled.