GCC 11.1.10 ld: warning: .init_array section has zero size

[Chris Packham]

Hi Nick,

On 17/06/21 11:50 pm, Nick Clifton wrote:
> Hi Chris,
>
>> I'm trying to migrate our builds to GCC 11.1.0 + binutils 2.36.1 and I'm
>> getting a weird linker warning for ARM (I'm also building for MIPS64
>> where I don't see the warning).
>>
>> $ rm -f test; make CC=arm-unknown-linux-gnueabi-gcc test
>> arm-unknown-linux-gnueabi-gcc     test.c   -o test
>> /usr/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-unknown-linux-gnueabi/11.1.0/../../../../arm-unknown-linux-gnueabi/bin/ld: 
>>
>> warning: .init_array section has zero size
>
> This message happens when the linker is trying to populate
> the .dynamic section with information about the executable.
>
> The fact that it is happening suggests that either you are
> creating a dynamic executable when you expected to be creating
> a static one, or that you are linking against the wrong libraries,
>
> If the former, try adding "-static" to the gcc command line.

-static does avoid the error. But generally I do want dynamic 
executables so it's not a solution but does look like we're on the right 
track.

> If the latter, check to see which libraries you have installed.  For
> example are they old versions which were built by an old version of gcc ?

Everything build from scratch. A few more details on the crosstool-ng 
issue[1]. I don't see the problem with GCC 9.3.0 (same libc & binutils). 
I do see it with GCC 10.3.0.

I'm in the process of getting a GCC bugzilla account so I was also going 
to report there.

--

[1] - https://github.com/crosstool-ng/crosstool-ng/issues/1531