As noted in bitcoin/bitcoin#6978:
When Qt discovered this issue (somewhere around 5.4), they added the check in qconfig.h so that compilation would fail in this QT_REDUCE_RELOCATIONS+-fPIE case.
To be precise, since Qt 5.4.2 the qglobal.h header implements the correct checks for -fPIE and -fPIC compatibility:
- https://github.com/qt/qtbase/commit/482d96a0c5d523ace63f56bda6851926b4469dd0 (5.0.0)
- https://github.com/qt/qtbase/commit/36d6eb721e7d5997ade75e289d4088dc48678d0d (5.4.2, QTBUG-45755)
- https://github.com/qt/qtbase/commit/3eca75de67b3fd2c890715b30c7899cebc096fe9 (5.4.2, QTBUG-45755)
- https://github.com/qt/qtbase/commit/95b6c4fed6521aa2212cab67cb8a6e5553e86117 (5.4.2)
As now we require GCC 8.1+ and Qt 5.11.3+, it is safe to rely on Qt's checks. The removed lines
#if defined(QT_REDUCE_RELOCATIONS)
choke
#endif
are redundant now.
One of the easiest way to test this PR is configure.log comparison.
No behavior change.