Character not found: _objc_retainAutoreleasedReturnValue in MacOS command-line tool

Question

Character not found: _objc_retainAutoreleasedReturnValue in MacOS command-line tool

There are a couple of questions with the same keywords as the title, however they focus on the iOS side of Objective-C. My problem is with the macOS command line tool.

Basically, what happens is that the Foundation tool (Cocoa) calls a C function that ends with a call to another Foundation method. And since the Foundation method is called from the C function, where the error " Symbol not found: _objc_retainAutoreleasedReturnValue" occurs at run time.

The code is as follows:

log.h

@interface Log : NSObject {

}

@end

void RemoveLogFile(NSString * theLogFile);

log.m

#import "Log.h"

@implementation Log

@end

// this is a C-style function
void RemoveLogFile(NSString * theLogFile)
{
    NSString * logFileName;

    NSLog( @"about to allocate a filename" );

// crash can happen in either case below
#if 1
    logFileName = [NSString stringWithFormat: @"%@.log", theLogFile];
#else
    logFileName = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat: @"%@.log", theLogFile];
#endif

    NSLog( @"done allocating");
}

main.m

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
#import "Log.h"

int main(int argc, const char * argv[])
{
    @autoreleasepool {
        NSString* outPath = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat: @"%@/MyLogFile", @"/tmp/"];
        NSLog( @"past out path alloc");
        RemoveLogFile(outPath);
        NSLog( @"done with the test");
    }
    return 0;
}

ARC is enabled for the 64-bit compiled tool ( it cannot be enabled for the 32-bit version ), and the minimum supported version of MacOS is 10.6.

MacOS 10.7, :

Process:         com.dautermann.Doughnuts [540]
Path:            /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.dautermann.Doughnuts
Identifier:      com.dautermann.Doughnuts
Version:         ??? (1.0)
Code Type:       X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [1]

Date/Time:       2013-02-19 05:02:48.337 -0800
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.7 (11A390)
Report Version:  8

Crashed Thread:  0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:  EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:
objc[540]: garbage collection is OFF

Dyld Error Message:
  Symbol not found: _objc_retainAutoreleasedReturnValue
  Referenced from: /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.dautermann.Doughnuts
  Expected in: /usr/lib/libobjc.A.dylib

Thread 0 name:  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
Thread 0 Crashed:
0   dyld                            0x00007fff5fc0106d dyld_fatal_error + 1
1   dyld                            0x00007fff5fc04918 dyld::fastBindLazySymbol(ImageLoader**, unsigned long) + 128
2   libdyld.dylib                   0x00007fff925f0716 dyld_stub_binder_ + 13
3   ???                             0x0000000100004030 0 + 4294983728
4   com.dautermann.Doughnuts    0x0000000100001523 0x100000000 + 5411
5   com.dautermann.Doughnuts    0x0000000100001470 0x100000000 + 5232