Strange KEEP behavior in linker script

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Denis,

   The changes in behaviour have happened because of various bug fixes.

> Shouldn't the KEEP() statement force the generation of the output 
> section in the ELF file, even if there are no input sections.

No, the KEEP statement will ensure that any input sections matching its 
argument will be copied into the output section containing it.  But if 
there are no matching input sections, then nothing will be copied and 
hence the output section might be discarded.  If you want to ensure that 
a section is present in the output file, make sure that some data is 
placed into it.  eg:

   .mysec :
   {
        mysec_start = .;
        KEEP(*(.mysec));
        mysec_end = .;
        LONG(0)
   }

Cheers
   Nick