[PATCH v1 0/6] TIMESTAMP output section command

[Alan Modra]

On Tue, Oct 07, 2025 at 02:39:31PM +0200, binutils@emagii.com wrote:
> [PATCH v1 1/6] ld:TIMESTAMP command, ldlex.l
> [PATCH v1 2/6] ld:TIMESTAMP command, ldgram.y
> [PATCH v1 3/6] ld:TIMESTAMP command, ldlang.*
> [PATCH v1 4/6] ld:TIMESTAMP info
> [PATCH v1 5/6] ld:TIMESTAMP ChangeLog
> [PATCH v1 6/6] ld:TIMESTAMP NEWS
> 
> ld:TIMESTAMP command
>     
> Add TIMESTAMP command to linker.
>     
> The TIMESTAMP command inserts a QUAD-word entry with the current time
> into the image at the current location.
> The value is the number of seconds since the Epoch,
> 1970-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 (UTC)
> 
> The main purpose for the command is for application headers
> in embedded systems which often require a timestamp to be able to
> exactly identify the build.
> 
> For now, it is a patchset of 6 patches.
> Will be merged into a single patch if/when accepted

You can of course already insert a quad-word entry with the current
time, so this is really just syntactic sugar.  One way is
INCLUDE timestamp.ld
in your script somewhere, then just before running the linker, run
echo ".QUAD `date '+%s'`" > timestamp.ld

-- 
Alan Modra