ld --section-start prevents merging sections

[Michael Hennebry]

On Fri, 13 Nov 2009, Papalagi Pakeha wrote:

> I put some functions of my program into a separate text section called
> .cryptext and I want to have this section start at a fixed address. To
> achieve that I should probably be using
> gcc -Wl,--section-start=.cryptext=0x12345678
>
> That works all right as long as .cryptext is only defined in a single
> object file. When there are functions in multiple object files placed
> in .cryptext then without -Wl,--section-start all the .cryptext
> sections are merged into a single one in the final binary, that's what
> I want. However with  -Wl,--section-start created .cryptext,
> .cryptext.1, .cryptext.2, etc and only the first one is placed at the
> specified address.

The problem isn't --section-start .
The problem is that .cryptext is an orphan section,
i.e. one not mentioned in the linker script.
For whatever reason, the linker does that with orphan sections.
So far as I know,
the only documentation on the subject is in bugzilla somewhere.

-- 
Michael   hennebry@web.cs.ndsu.NoDak.edu
"Pessimist: The glass is half empty.
Optimist:   The glass is half full.
Engineer:   The glass is twice as big as it needs to be."