Note, sections without the SHF_ALLOC flag, such as `.debug_*` sections, do not contribute to the relocation distance pressure.
Many 10+GiB binaries (likely due to not using split DWARF) might have much smaller code+data and not even close to the limit.
However, Google, Meta, and ByteDance have encountered x86-64 relocation distance issue with their huge C++ server binaries.
To my knowledge industry users in other domains haven't run into this problem.
To address this, Google adopted the medium code model approximately two years ago for its sanitizer and PGO instrumentation builds.
CUDA fat binaries also caused problems. I suggest that linker script `INSERT BEFORE/AFTER` for orphan sections (https://reviews.llvm.org/D74375 ) served as a key mitigation.
I hope that a range extension thunk ABI, similar to AArch64/Power, is defined for the x86-64 psABI.
It is better than the current long branch pessimization we have with -mcmodel=large.
---
It seems that nobody has run into this .eh_frame_hdr implementation limitation yet
* `.eh_frame_hdr -> .text`: GNU ld and ld.lld only support 32-bit offsets (`table_enc = DW_EH_PE_datarel | DW_EH_PE_sdata4;`) as of Dec 2025.
However, Google, Meta, and ByteDance have encountered x86-64 relocation distance issue with their huge C++ server binaries. To my knowledge industry users in other domains haven't run into this problem.
To address this, Google adopted the medium code model approximately two years ago for its sanitizer and PGO instrumentation builds. CUDA fat binaries also caused problems. I suggest that linker script `INSERT BEFORE/AFTER` for orphan sections (https://reviews.llvm.org/D74375 ) served as a key mitigation.
I hope that a range extension thunk ABI, similar to AArch64/Power, is defined for the x86-64 psABI. It is better than the current long branch pessimization we have with -mcmodel=large.
---
It seems that nobody has run into this .eh_frame_hdr implementation limitation yet
* `.eh_frame_hdr -> .text`: GNU ld and ld.lld only support 32-bit offsets (`table_enc = DW_EH_PE_datarel | DW_EH_PE_sdata4;`) as of Dec 2025.