What exactly does `-rdynamic` do and when exactly is it needed?

Question

What exactly does -rdynamic (or --export-dynamic at the linker level) do and how does it relate to symbol visibility as defined by the -fvisibility* flags or visibility pragmas and __attribute__s?

For --export-dynamic, ld(1) mentions:

... If you use "dlopen" to load a dynamic object which needs to refer back to the symbols defined by the program, rather than some other dynamic object, then you will probably need to use this option when linking the program itself. ...

I'm not sure I completely understand this. Could you please provide an example that doesn't work without -rdynamic but does with it?

Edit: I actually tried compiling a couple of dummy libraries (single file, multi-file, various -O levels, some inter-function calls, some hidden symbols, some visible), with and without -rdynamic, and so far I've been getting byte-identical outputs (when keeping all other flags constant of course), which is quite puzzling.

Answer 1

Here is a simple example project to illustrate the use of -rdynamic.

bar.c

extern void foo(void);

void bar(void)
{
    foo();
}

main.c

#include <dlfcn.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

void foo(void)
{
    puts("Hello world");
}

int main(void)
{
    void * dlh = dlopen("./libbar.so", RTLD_NOW);
    if (!dlh) {
        fprintf(stderr, "%s\n", dlerror());
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE); 
    }
    void (*bar)(void) = dlsym(dlh,"bar");
    if (!bar) {
        fprintf(stderr, "%s\n", dlerror());
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE); 
    }
    bar();
    return 0;
}

Makefile

.PHONY: all clean test

LDEXTRAFLAGS ?=

all: prog

bar.o: bar.c
    gcc -c -Wall -fpic -o $@ $<

libbar.so: bar.o
    gcc -shared -o $@ $<

main.o: main.c
    gcc -c -Wall -o $@ $<

prog: main.o | libbar.so
    gcc $(LDEXTRAFLAGS) -o $@ $< -L. -lbar -ldl

clean:
    rm -f *.o *.so prog

test: prog
    ./$<

Here, bar.c becomes a shared library libbar.so and main.c becomes a program that dlopens libbar and calls bar() from that library. bar() calls foo(), which is external in bar.c and defined in main.c.

So, without -rdynamic:

$ make test
gcc -c -Wall -o main.o main.c
gcc -c -Wall -fpic -o bar.o bar.c
gcc -shared -o libbar.so bar.o
gcc  -o prog main.o -L. -lbar -ldl
./prog
./libbar.so: undefined symbol: foo
Makefile:23: recipe for target 'test' failed

And with -rdynamic:

$ make clean
rm -f *.o *.so prog
$ make test LDEXTRAFLAGS=-rdynamic
gcc -c -Wall -o main.o main.c
gcc -c -Wall -fpic -o bar.o bar.c
gcc -shared -o libbar.so bar.o
gcc -rdynamic -o prog main.o -L. -lbar -ldl
./prog
Hello world