1<html lang="en"> 2<head> 3<title>Orphan Sections - Untitled</title> 4<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html"> 5<meta name="description" content="Untitled"> 6<meta name="generator" content="makeinfo 4.13"> 7<link title="Top" rel="start" href="index.html#Top"> 8<link rel="up" href="Expressions.html#Expressions" title="Expressions"> 9<link rel="prev" href="Symbols.html#Symbols" title="Symbols"> 10<link rel="next" href="Location-Counter.html#Location-Counter" title="Location Counter"> 11<link href="http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/" rel="generator-home" title="Texinfo Homepage"> 12<!-- 13This file documents the GNU linker LD 14(Sourcery CodeBench Lite 2011.09-69) 15version 2.21.53. 16 17Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 182001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 19 20Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document 21under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 22or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; 23with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no 24Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the 25section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''.--> 26<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> 27<style type="text/css"><!-- 28 pre.display { font-family:inherit } 29 pre.format { font-family:inherit } 30 pre.smalldisplay { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } 31 pre.smallformat { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } 32 pre.smallexample { font-size:smaller } 33 pre.smalllisp { font-size:smaller } 34 span.sc { font-variant:small-caps } 35 span.roman { font-family:serif; font-weight:normal; } 36 span.sansserif { font-family:sans-serif; font-weight:normal; } 37--></style> 38<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../cs.css"> 39</head> 40<body> 41<div class="node"> 42<a name="Orphan-Sections"></a> 43<p> 44Next: <a rel="next" accesskey="n" href="Location-Counter.html#Location-Counter">Location Counter</a>, 45Previous: <a rel="previous" accesskey="p" href="Symbols.html#Symbols">Symbols</a>, 46Up: <a rel="up" accesskey="u" href="Expressions.html#Expressions">Expressions</a> 47<hr> 48</div> 49 50<h4 class="subsection">3.10.4 Orphan Sections</h4> 51 52<p><a name="index-orphan-514"></a>Orphan sections are sections present in the input files which 53are not explicitly placed into the output file by the linker 54script. The linker will still copy these sections into the 55output file, but it has to guess as to where they should be 56placed. The linker uses a simple heuristic to do this. It 57attempts to place orphan sections after non-orphan sections of the 58same attribute, such as code vs data, loadable vs non-loadable, etc. 59If there is not enough room to do this then it places 60at the end of the file. 61 62 <p>For ELF targets, the attribute of the section includes section type as 63well as section flag. 64 65 <p>If an orphaned section's name is representable as a C identifier then 66the linker will automatically see <a href="PROVIDE.html#PROVIDE">PROVIDE</a> two symbols: 67__start_SECNAME and __end_SECNAME, where SECNAME is the name of the 68section. These indicate the start address and end address of the 69orphaned section respectively. Note: most section names are not 70representable as C identifiers because they contain a ‘<samp><span class="samp">.</span></samp>’ 71character. 72 73 </body></html> 74 75