llvm-strip.exe error: unexpected associative section index

[encelo]

I'm the developer of nCine, a cross-platform 2D game framework that is constantly built by GitHub Actions using different compilers, on different platforms.

Since some months there is a combination in the test matrix that it consistently failing: when I compile my project on MSYS2 using clang then I have a strange issue with llvm-strip.

The error message is: C:\msys64\mingw64\bin/llvm-strip.exe: error: 'D:/a/nCine/nCine-build-DevDist/libncine.dll': unexpected associative section index. Basically my library cannot be stripped for some reason and this was not happening some months ago.

I can reproduce the issue on my machine with MSYS2 installed and Clang 13, it is not a GitHub Actions runner only issue.

[llvmbot]

@llvm/issue-subscribers-tools-llvm-objcopy-strip

[belmeopmenieuwesim]

This is still an issue today. Even on LLVM version 14.0

[belmeopmenieuwesim]

I found something that may be of value. It appears that this error is triggered when PointerToSymbolTable is set in the PE IMAGE_FILE_HEADER. If this is zeroed out, then llvm-strip will work fine. Hope this helps...

A temporary fix would be also to compile with the linker flag --discard-all, since it will avoid populating PointerToSymbolTable.

@MaskRay maybe you know a way to solve this in llvm-strip?

[loumalouomega]

Any new about this issue?, I would try the --discard-all workaround

[jh7370]

@mstorsjo, this is outside my realm of expertise. Could you take a look?

[mstorsjo]

I found something that may be of value. It appears that this error is triggered when PointerToSymbolTable is set in the PE IMAGE_FILE_HEADER. If this is zeroed out, then llvm-strip will work fine. Hope this helps...

I can successfully strip binaries with PointerToSymbolTable (that's the default for of binaries linked in mingw mode, where this tool is used a lot), so there has to be something else to it as well.

Please provide a sample input file where this issue reproduces.

[jeremyd2019]

I am getting this error on lld.exe built on Cygwin with llvm/clang 21.1.0-rc1 and linked with ld.bfd 2.44. Stripping this exe with binutils strip results in an exception processing pseudo-relocations. Unstripped it seems to work fine (and passes all lld tests). Hopefully you can tell what's wrong with it.

lld.zip

This does not occur when built with GCC, or when linked with LLD

[jeremyd2019]

This also happens to clang-21.exe, which is much smaller.

clang-21.zip