Strange KEEP behavior in linker script
Denis FERRANTI
denis.ferranti@st.com
Tue May 6 16:16:00 GMT 2008
Nick Clifton wrote:
> 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.
i agree with you. This is the mainly the case in our implementation.
>
> 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 ?
>
Reading at old mails it seems indeed that there have been some issues
with alignment of empty output sections not discarded. I can see the issue.
If the creation of an empty section is a problem, then the best thing to
do with the symbols is indeed to attach them somewhere.
Thanks for you answers,
> Cheers
> Nick
>
>
--
Denis Ferranti
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