Re: objcopy fails silently with an empty input file

[Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>]

Hi Shaun,

> Fair enough. The empty file is of limited use. I have an application
> that writes a payload binary to flash. To make sure the build
> succeeds, if a payload binary wasn't provided make simply touched
> 'payload.bin'. 

If no payload was provided then shouldn't the build fail ?  [Of course 
it is your system so it can behave as you wish].

> This had the slight benefit that if this app was
> mistakenly run it wouldn't bork the flash, since the payload is zero
> bytes. I'll replace 'touch payload.bin' with 'echo empty >
> payload.bin', but this inherent benefit is lost. Instead, the app will
> just have to check for a signature byte.

You could easily create an dummy empty.o (eg using the objcopy patched 
in the way you suggested) and then just copy this file into place if the 
build process failed to create a non-zero length output file.

Cheers
  Nick