Re: [PATCH]: new ALIGNTOATLEAST linker script directive

[Ian Lance Taylor <iant at google dot com>]

"David Stubbs" <stubbs@IceraSemi.com> writes:

>> > This patch adds a new ALIGNTOATLEAST linker script directive.
>> This
>> > simplifies some of our linker scripts, and makes them a lot
>> easier to
>> > read.
>> 
>> It's a fine idea, but it seems to me that you can do this kind of
>> thing already.  I think that rather than add an increasing number
>> of
>
> Thanks for the feedback. You can do this kind of thing already. The
> problem is that in our case there are lots of preceding sections,
> including overlays. This made the resultant expression quite complicated
> and error prone, so we favored implementing this directive.
>
>> utility functions to the linker script language, it would make
>> more
>> sense to encourage preprocessing of linker scripts in some way.
>
> I'm not so sure what you mean by this, or how we could have used this
> kind of approach to solve our problem. Also, link times seem to be quite
> an issue these days. Although preprocessing shouldn't add much of an
> overhead, isn't it something we'd be concerned about?

I meant running your linker script through something like m4 to
convert ALIGNTOATLEAST to an expression of its arguments.

Link times do matter, but m4 processing of a linker script should be
very fast, and may not even have to happen on every build.

Ian