Work in progress patch to spur the discussion. Motivated by bfds common symbol handling in archives which is needed by FORTRAN libraries which use CommonBlock/BlockData .
When an object symbol is a tentative definition, we search archives for 'real' definitions to override the common symbol.
strong isn't defined in ELF, although intuitively I know what you mean. Consider:
"Check if a non-common symbol should be fetched to override a common definition."