Why no expressions in MEMORY command?

[Charles Manning]

> > Because no one has cared enough to write support to handle such symbols
> > in linker scripts.
Maybe I care enough to have a crack at this:-)

>
>   FYI:  I looked into it in some depth once; it would require quite a hefty
> bit of patching, since the information about symbol values isn't evaulated
> yet at the time the parser is reading the MEMORY command.  See PR ld/518
> http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=518, also see
> http://sources.redhat.com/ml/binutils/2004-03/msg00540.html
> for a detailed analysis, and
> http://sources.redhat.com/ml/binutils/2004-03/msg00571.html
> for a suggested solution.

Hmmm bummer. It seems to come down to there being no distinction between 
expressions that can be evaluated before symbols are produced and others.

This makes the MEMORY stuff relatively limitied in its utility. There are 
work arounds, but they are far from elegant.


-- Charles