Re: [PATCH] Linker fix for data-only sections

[Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>]

Hi Daniel,

> > > > I may be missing something here, but where in your patch do you check
> > > > to make sure that the section is a data section and not a code
> > > > section ?

> > > ARM sections may contain both code and data, ruled by the mapping
> > > symbols, so (according to the EABI) we don't care if the section
> > > happens to have the executable attribute.
> >
> > Doh - I had forgotten that. Of course this only applies to EABI
> > conformant ARM binaries. So maybe you ought to check for non-eabi
> > targets and handle them appropriately ?
>
> Could you please ellaborate? AFAIK, this is ARM (not only EABI), please
> let me know.

What I meant was that the EABI specifies that a section without mapping 
symbols should be treated as if it contained data, regardless of any 
attributes that might apply to that section.  (I think that this is 
correct, I do not actually have the text of the EABI in front of me).

But for arm-elf binaries, or arm-wince, or arm-pe, the EABI is not being 
used and in these cases it would make intuitive sense that sections 
without mapping symbols but with a contains-executable-code attribute of 
some kind should be treated as if they contained code.

Does this make sense ?

Cheers
  Nick