9.4.2.4 ARM relocation generation

Specific data relocations can be generated by putting the relocation name in parentheses after the symbol name. For example:

        .word foo(TARGET1)

This will generate an ‘R_ARM_TARGET1’ relocation against the symbol foo. The following relocations are supported: GOT, GOTOFF, TARGET1, TARGET2, SBREL, TLSGD, TLSLDM, TLSLDO, TLSDESC, TLSCALL, GOTTPOFF, GOT_PREL and TPOFF.

For compatibility with older toolchains the assembler also accepts (PLT) after branch targets. On legacy targets this will generate the deprecated ‘R_ARM_PLT32’ relocation. On EABI targets it will encode either the ‘R_ARM_CALL’ or ‘R_ARM_JUMP24’ relocation, as appropriate.

Relocations for ‘MOVW’ and ‘MOVT’ instructions can be generated by prefixing the value with ‘#:lower16:’ and ‘#:upper16’ respectively. For example to load the 32-bit address of foo into r0:

        MOVW r0, #:lower16:foo
        MOVT r0, #:upper16:foo

Relocations ‘R_ARM_THM_ALU_ABS_G0_NC’, ‘R_ARM_THM_ALU_ABS_G1_NC’, ‘R_ARM_THM_ALU_ABS_G2_NC’ and ‘R_ARM_THM_ALU_ABS_G3_NC’ can be generated by prefixing the value with ‘#:lower0_7:#’, ‘#:lower8_15:#’, ‘#:upper0_7:#’ and ‘#:upper8_15:#’ respectively. For example to load the 32-bit address of foo into r0:

        MOVS r0, #:upper8_15:#foo
        LSLS r0, r0, #8
        ADDS r0, #:upper0_7:#foo
        LSLS r0, r0, #8
        ADDS r0, #:lower8_15:#foo
        LSLS r0, r0, #8
        ADDS r0, #:lower0_7:#foo