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 2013.11-24) 15version 2.23.52. 16 17Copyright (C) 1991-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 18 19Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document 20under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 21or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; 22with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no 23Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the 24section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''.--> 25<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> 26<style type="text/css"><!-- 27 pre.display { font-family:inherit } 28 pre.format { font-family:inherit } 29 pre.smalldisplay { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } 30 pre.smallformat { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } 31 pre.smallexample { font-size:smaller } 32 pre.smalllisp { font-size:smaller } 33 span.sc { font-variant:small-caps } 34 span.roman { font-family:serif; font-weight:normal; } 35 span.sansserif { font-family:sans-serif; font-weight:normal; } 36--></style> 37<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../cs.css"> 38</head> 39<body> 40<div class="node"> 41<a name="Orphan-Sections"></a> 42<p> 43Next: <a rel="next" accesskey="n" href="Location-Counter.html#Location-Counter">Location Counter</a>, 44Previous: <a rel="previous" accesskey="p" href="Symbols.html#Symbols">Symbols</a>, 45Up: <a rel="up" accesskey="u" href="Expressions.html#Expressions">Expressions</a> 46<hr> 47</div> 48 49<h4 class="subsection">3.10.4 Orphan Sections</h4> 50 51<p><a name="index-orphan-523"></a>Orphan sections are sections present in the input files which 52are not explicitly placed into the output file by the linker 53script. The linker will still copy these sections into the 54output file, but it has to guess as to where they should be 55placed. The linker uses a simple heuristic to do this. It 56attempts to place orphan sections after non-orphan sections of the 57same attribute, such as code vs data, loadable vs non-loadable, etc. 58If there is not enough room to do this then it places 59at the end of the file. 60 61 <p>For ELF targets, the attribute of the section includes section type as 62well as section flag. 63 64 <p>If an orphaned section's name is representable as a C identifier then 65the linker will automatically see <a href="PROVIDE.html#PROVIDE">PROVIDE</a> two symbols: 66__start_SECNAME and __stop_SECNAME, where SECNAME is the name of the 67section. These indicate the start address and end address of the 68orphaned section respectively. Note: most section names are not 69representable as C identifiers because they contain a ‘<samp><span class="samp">.</span></samp>’ 70character. 71 72 </body></html> 73 74