[Bug ld/12565] NOLOAD sections empty

[jifl-bugzilla at jifvik dot org]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=12565

--- Comment #15 from Jonathan Larmour <jifl-bugzilla at jifvik dot org> 
2011-07-01 08:57:41 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #14)
> 
> 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.

But before H.J.'s change in bug #5522 it did include contents, which is why I
reported this change of behaviour in the first place, so I'm not sure what you
mean about the precedent. The documented behaviour was to include contents
prior to your (and H.J.'s) change.

I hadn't noticed your change before as I've only been using 2.20.1 which
doesn't include it.

> As others have replied, people make use of it this way.

We have made use of it with contents, as per the documentation. If you want
something that doesn't include contents, wouldn't it be better to make a new
output section type rather than changing the behaviour of an existing one?
Otherwise it could be confusing. If you want something different from the
previous behaviour of NOLOAD it would be better to remove NOLOAD so people can
decide what they want to do with their linker scripts once they see the error.
Personally, I had thought when I submitted this bug that I had found an
isolated instance, but it turns out there are a bunch of linker scripts
floating around my company which rely on NOLOAD's old behaviour.

libgloss currently relies on it including contents too.

Jifl

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