RFC [PATCH] Use .strtab section for section name strings

Alan Modra amodra@gmail.com
Wed Jul 1 00:54:00 GMT 2015


On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 11:26:24PM -0700, Cary Coutant wrote:
> >> Here is a patch to use .strtab section for section name strings if
> >> there are symbols, otherwise use .shstrtab section.
> >
> > I think this is a bad idea.
> > ...
> > The great majority of object files won't see as much benefit.  I
> > reckon shared libraries and executables will only show very small
> > decreases, at the cost of violating the ELF gABI.
> 
> To be fair, I don't think this would violate the spirit of the ELF
> spec.

You may be correct, but how will this play with utilities that modify
binaries, eg. objcopy/strip?  Particularly if someone uses an older
objcopy/strip with one of these newfangled binaries.  I guess
objcopy/strip might just happen to work due to BFD hiding away details
like .strtab and .shstrtab, but I'm not sure.  elfutils ought to be
checked too.

-- 
Alan Modra
Australia Development Lab, IBM



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