SHT_GROUP support, part 1

[Ulrich Drepper]

Alan Modra <amodra@bigpond.net.au> writes:

> I'm a little puzzled as to why a symbol is needed for the signature.
> Surely, a string is all that's needed?

The string is what is important but how to represent it?  The cleanest
way is by a symbol.  The spec contains appropriate rules for the case
when you remove a section group.  And it is also possible to have
multiple symbol tables, one for each section group.  So, using a
symbol is no bad choice.

> The other slightly puzzling thing in the info you sent me some time
> ago, is why "The group section must appear in the section table
> before any section it is referencing"

Why is this puzzling?  This makes handling section groups much easier.

> Hmm, that could have interesting consequences, ie. lots of unwanted extra
> sections as eg. gcc swaps between .rodata and .text during code generation.
> I think you'd need some way to say "change to the most recently used
> section of a given name"

Something like that.  Plus the functionality to force creating a new
section of a given name (e.g., for inside a section group).

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