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Re: [Bug ld/12565] NOLOAD sections empty
- From: Alan Modra <amodra at gmail dot com>
- To: Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>
- Cc: "hjl.tools at gmail dot com" <sourceware-bugzilla at sourceware dot org>, binutils <binutils at sourceware dot org>
- Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 09:33:11 +0930
- Subject: Re: [Bug ld/12565] NOLOAD sections empty
- References: <bug-12565-70@http.sourceware.org/bugzilla/> <bug-12565-70-H4yGNZZKA2@http.sourceware.org/bugzilla/> <4E0C8A37.5090604@redhat.com>
On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 03:37:43PM +0100, Nick Clifton wrote:
> Hi H.J., Hi Alan,
>
> I have been looking at PR 12565, and I have to say that I do not
> understand the linker's behaviour for NOLOAD sections on ELF based
> targets. What is the point of having a section that cannot be
> loaded and that does not have any contents ?
>
> Also, as far as I can see, this behaviour is not documented
> anywhere. Do you know of any applications that rely upon this
> feature ?
I spent quite a lot of time wrestling with NOLOAD before
http://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2010-09/msg00245.html. I believe we
have fairly strong historical precedent for the current behaviour on
ELF, ie. that NOLOAD makes a .bss style section, noload, alloc, no
contents. As others have replied, people make use of it this way.
See also http://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2010-10/msg00433.html
--
Alan Modra
Australia Development Lab, IBM