Re: ld -r frustration

[Richard Earnshaw <rearnsha at gcc dot gnu dot org>]

On Thu, 2004-07-29 at 03:31, Alan Modra wrote:

> Incidentally, one of the nasty effects of ld -r on any arch is the fact
> that it can reorder code.  eg. If compiling with -ffunction-sections,
> all static functions called "setup" in different files will be grouped
> into the one section.  This loses code locality and can affect cache
> performance.

I would expect that to happen on a normal link too.  The linkers
collating rules will cause it to happen.  It's effectively a consequence
of the fact that gas can't really support multiple sections called .text
in a single object file (I've still to look into HJ's comment about
section groups, but in the general case we don't want to be creating
those).

I have wondered whether it might make sense to tweak the gas .section
operation to take a second name, something like (but the syntax could be
better)

.section abc=.text, ....
# code for abc
.section abc
# code for abc
.section def=.text,...
# code for def
.section abc
# code for abc
.section def
# code for def

this would generate two sections in an object file, both called .text
but the first containing the named group abc, the second the named group
def.

R.