GNU gcc/ld - wrapping a call to symbol with caller and callee defined in the same object file

You have to weaken and globalize the symbol using objcopy.

-W symbolname
--weaken-symbol=symbolname
    Make symbol symbolname weak. This option may be given more than once.
--globalize-symbol=symbolname
    Give symbol symbolname global scoping so that it is visible outside of the file in which it is defined. This option may be given more than once.

This worked for me

bar.c:

#include <stdio.h>
int foo(){
  printf("Wrap-FU\n");
}

foo.c:

#include <stdio.h>

void foo(){
printf("foo\n");
}

int main(){
printf("main\n");
foo();
}

Compile it

$ gcc -c foo.c bar.c 

Weaken the foo symbol and make it global, so it's available for linker again.

$ objcopy foo.o --globalize-symbol=foo --weaken-symbol=foo foo2.o

Now you can link your new obj with the wrap from bar.c

$ gcc -o nowrap foo.o #for reference
$ gcc -o wrapme foo2.o bar.o

Test

$ ./nowrap 
main
foo

And the wrapped one:

$ ./wrapme 
main
Wrap-FU

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

//gcc -ggdb -o test test.c -Wl,-wrap,malloc
void* __real_malloc(size_t bytes);

int main()
{
   int *p = NULL;
   int i = 0;

   p = malloc(100*sizeof(int));

   for (i=0; i < 100; i++)
       p[i] = i;

   free(p);
   return 0;
}

void* __wrap_malloc(size_t bytes)
{
      return __real_malloc(bytes);
}

And then just compile this code and debug. When you call the reall malloc, the function called will __wrap_malloc and __real_malloc will call malloc.

I think this is the way to intercept the calls.

Basically its the --wrap option provided by ld.

You can use __attribute__((weak)) before the implementation of the callee in order to let someone reimplement it without GCC yelling about multiple definitons.

For example suppose you want to mock the world function in the following hello.c code unit. You can prepend the attribute in order to be able to override it.

#include "hello.h"
#include <stdio.h>

__attribute__((weak))
void world(void)
{
    printf("world from lib\n");
}

void hello(void)
{
    printf("hello\n");
    world();
}

And you can then override it in another unit file. Very useful for unit testing/mocking:

#include <stdio.h>
#include "hello.h"

/* overrides */
void world(void)
{
    printf("world from main.c"\n);
}

void main(void)
{
    hello();
    return 0;
}