Re: protected __start_section and __stop_section symbols

[Cimbali <me at cimba dot li>]

Hi again,

I was able to find that commit f3996791 is what changed this:
https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git;a=commit;h=f399679112df997c1416f7993eaac0f5fd76c144

Why was this change made? It's sort of unexpected, and for what it's 
worth breaking some codes (not a lot I guess, but at least mine and it 
took some time to track down :) ).

Thanks,
Cimbali


On 05/02/18 11:21, Cimbali wrote:
> Hi,
>
> According to readelf, when I define a section in GCC code with 
> __attribute__(("section")) in a shared library, the __start_section 
> and __stop_section symbols (which allow me retrieve the start and end 
> of said section) are now protected with ld v2.29.1.
>
> I had some code that relied on having those symbols overruled by a 
> program to which the library is linked, that is if the section exists 
> in the program then use it from the library, otherwise fall back to 
> the library's section (details and reproducible example here: 
> https://stackoverflow.com/q/48591224/1387346 ).
>
> This is no longer possible, but used to work with ld v2.26.1. I could 
> not find any decent changelog for ld, nor any mention of this in the 
> man page, and cannot figure out if this is a bug or a feature. Why did 
> this change of behaviour happen?
>
> I am aware that the __start_section and __stop_section symbols are 
> barely documented to start with, but I'd like to know if there is a 
> way for the symbols not to be protected even with newer versions of 
> ld, or if I have to use another way of accessing data in a program 
> from a library's constructor.
>
> Thanks,
> Cimbali