7.121 .weakref alias, target

This directive creates an alias to the target symbol that enables the symbol to be referenced with weak-symbol semantics, but without actually making it weak. If direct references or definitions of the symbol are present, then the symbol will not be weak, but if all references to it are through weak references, the symbol will be marked as weak in the symbol table.

The effect is equivalent to moving all references to the alias to a separate assembly source file, renaming the alias to the symbol in it, declaring the symbol as weak there, and running a reloadable link to merge the object files resulting from the assembly of the new source file and the old source file that had the references to the alias removed.

The alias itself never makes to the symbol table, and is entirely handled within the assembler.