3.6.4.5 Input Section Example

The following example is a complete linker script. It tells the linker to read all of the sections from file all.o and place them at the start of output section ‘outputa’ which starts at location ‘0x10000’. All of section ‘.input1’ from file foo.o follows immediately, in the same output section. All of section ‘.input2’ from foo.o goes into output section ‘outputb’, followed by section ‘.input1’ from foo1.o. All of the remaining ‘.input1’ and ‘.input2’ sections from any files are written to output section ‘outputc’.

SECTIONS {
  outputa 0x10000 :
    {
    all.o
    foo.o (.input1)
    }

  outputb :
    {
    foo.o (.input2)
    foo1.o (.input1)
    }

  outputc :
    {
    *(.input1)
    *(.input2)
    }
}

If an output section’s name is the same as the input section’s name and is representable as a C identifier, then the linker will automatically see PROVIDE two symbols: __start_SECNAME and __stop_SECNAME, where SECNAME is the name of the section. These indicate the start address and end address of the output section respectively. Note: most section names are not representable as C identifiers because they contain a ‘.’ character.