Strange KEEP behavior in linker script

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Denis,

> just because of the symbols attached to it in the linker script...that 
> are now attached to another section.

Is the section containing the symbols relevant in this case ?

Presumably what is important is the difference in the values of the two 
symbols.  ie the size of the contents of the .mysec section.  When this 
section is empty, the two symbols are attached to another section, but 
the difference between them still accurately reflects the size of the 
(non-existent) .mysec section.

Essentially I see the situation like this:

   The bug with the 2.16 linker's behaviour is that it would create 
empty sections in the output.
   The bug with the 2.17 linker's behaviour is that it would convert 
section-relative symbols to absolute symbols.
   The problem with the 2.18 linker's behaviour is that the symbols in 
the empty section are being (non-intuitively) attached to another section.

So, where do you think that the symbols should go ?

Cheers
   Nick