PATCH: Improve .note section handling in readelf

Mark Mitchell mark@codesourcery.com
Wed Oct 27 00:53:00 GMT 2004


Alan Modra wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 07:16:20PM -0700, Mark Mitchell wrote:
> 
>>Also, I see that obj-elf.c in GAS is emitting bogus entries when
>>processing ".version".  In particular, it sets the name in the note to
>>the version.  The name in the note should be the toolchain that
>>created the note, probably "GNU" in our case.  The version itself
>>should go in the description field.
> 
> 
> That is true according to the current ELF gABI, but the wording is
> fairly weak "by convention, vendors use their own name".  However, gas
> has been using the name entry for the version string since 1993, which
> predates any ELF spec I could find.  Changing the note will no doubt
> break tools that scan this note, if there are any such tools.
> 
> Which is really just stating the obvious.  I'm not against the change
> since I'm not aware of any tools that scan NT_VERSION notes..

Yes, that's why I was asking.  I do not know of any such tools, but then 
again I don't know that I would know. :-)  I'm not very intent on 
changing this; it's not hurting me in any way.  It's just weird is all.

>> And, the "namesz" field in the
>>ELF note is bogus; it's being rounded up to a wordsize boundary, but
>>the correct thing to is just to pad the entry itself, not round the
>>"namesz" field.
> 
> Yes, that should be fixed.

OK, I'll do at least that bit then.

-- 
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery, LLC
mark@codesourcery.com



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