RFC: Sort input section by list

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Arjan,

> I suppose we chose differently; from a distro point of view patching 
> each app's code that big
> is a no go for us; once the new binutils is released we can automate and 
> use the new feature
> pretty quickly.
> Add to this that which functions are on the list will also depend on 
> which arguments you pass to configure...
> sorry but really the "just patch the code in 3000 places" is really not 
> going to work ;-(

Would you agree that if a using-currently-available-tools process could 
be automated then it would be an acceptable solution to you ?

Lets assume that you have gotten to the stage where you have the 
profiled list of functions in the order you wish them to appear in the 
final binary.  Lets also assume that you have compiled the sources with 
-ffunction-sections.  You could use a sed/awk script to convert the 
function names into a linker script fragment that specifically 
references each of the function sections by name. Then all you would 
need is a slightly modified default linker script that INCLUDEs this 
constructed fragment at the right place in the generic linker script.

Cheers
   Nick

PS.  For the record I am not saying that this feature cannot be added to 
the linker.  I am just trying to avoid feature bloat by seeing if your 
problem can be solved by using the already existing features of the 
compiler and linker.