Fwd: [PATCH] COFF Compliant .ctors and .dtors sections

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Martell,

>> In fact to be clearer - and more consistent - I would suggest changing
>> the names of the start and end constructor sections to be something like:
>> .ctors$start and .ctors$end.
> 
> LLD and LINK.exe do not have any notion of a linker script and will
> organise the section in the following order.
> .ctors
> .ctors.AAAAA
> .ctors.zzz

Ah - OK - in which case the original section names are OK.  But it would be
nice if you included a comment in the crtexe.c source file explaining why
those particular names are chosen.

> Technically someone could add extra z's which would then never get
> called so I am relying on people not doing something so ridiculous.

Never trust users :-)  

But I agree - it is particularly unlikely to happen.

>   With that in mind would the following be acceptable to you.
> 
> ${CONSTRUCTING+
>      PROVIDE(__CTOR_LIST__ = .);
>      PROVIDE(___CTOR_LIST__ = .);
>      LONG(-1);
>      KEEP (*(.ctors));
>      KEEP (*(.ctor));
>      KEEP (*(SORT_BY_NAME(.ctors.*)));
>      LONG(0);
>    }

Yup - that works for me.  In fact I have now checked this change into the
mainline development sources.

> For my question I also wanted to ask while I we are in discussion on
> the linker scripts how would I make an alias name to __image_base__ to
> __ImageBase?

Assignment should work.  Something like this:

  __image_base__ = __ImageBase;

Alternatively you could just use the --image-base=<value> linker command
line option.  This takes care of setting both __image_base__ and __ImageBase 
to <value>.

Cheers
  Nick