On Wed, Nov 4, 2020 at 3:00 PM Hans-Peter Nilsson <h...@bitrange.com> wrote: > > On Wed, 4 Nov 2020, H.J. Lu wrote: > > On Wed, Nov 4, 2020 at 1:56 PM Hans-Peter Nilsson <h...@bitrange.com> wrote: > > > On Wed, 4 Nov 2020, H.J. Lu wrote: > > > > > > > On Wed, Nov 4, 2020 at 1:03 PM Hans-Peter Nilsson <h...@bitrange.com> > > > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > On Wed, 4 Nov 2020, H.J. Lu wrote: > > > > > > On Wed, Nov 4, 2020 at 10:09 AM Hans-Peter Nilsson > > > > > > <h...@bitrange.com> wrote: > > > > > > > I'm not much more than a random voice, but an assembly directive > > > > > > > that specifies the symbol (IIUC your .retain directive) to > > > > > > > > > > > > But .retain directive DOES NOT adjust symbol attribute. > > > > > > I see I missed to point out that I was speaking about the *gcc > > > symbol* attribute "used". > > > > There is no such corresponding symbol attribute in ELF. > > I have not missed that, nor that SHF_GNU_RETAIN is so new that > it's not in binutils master. I have also not missed that gcc > caters to other object formats too. A common symbol-specific > directive such as .retain, would be better than messing with > section attributes, for gcc.
This is totally irrelevant to SHF_GNU_RETAIN. > > > It's cleaner to the compiler if it can pass on to the assembler > > > the specific symbol that needs to be kept. > > > > > > > SHF_GNU_RETAIN is for section and GCC should place the symbol, > > which should be kept, in the SHF_GNU_RETAIN section directly, not > > through .retain directive. > > This is where opinions differ. Anyway, this is now repetition; > I'm done. .retain is ill-defined. For example, [hjl@gnu-cfl-2 gcc]$ cat /tmp/x.c static int xyzzy __attribute__((__used__)); [hjl@gnu-cfl-2 gcc]$ ./xgcc -B./ -S /tmp/x.c -fcommon [hjl@gnu-cfl-2 gcc]$ cat x.s .file "x.c" .text .retain xyzzy <<<<<<<<< What does it do? .local xyzzy .comm xyzzy,4,4 .ident "GCC: (GNU) 11.0.0 20201103 (experimental)" .section .note.GNU-stack,"",@progbits [hjl@gnu-cfl-2 gcc]$ A symbol directive should operate on the symbol table. With 'R' flag, we got .file "x.c" .text .section .bss.xyzzy,"awR",@nobits .align 4 .type xyzzy, @object .size xyzzy, 4 xyzzy: .zero 4 .ident "GCC: (GNU) 11.0.0 20201104 (experimental)" .section .note.GNU-stack,"",@progbits -- H.J.
