Load region attributes
load region has attributes that allow you to control where parts of your image are loaded in the target memory.
The load region attributes are:
ABSOLUTE
- The content is placed at a fixed address that does not change after
linking. The load address of the region is specified by the base designator. This is the
default, unless you use
PI
orRELOC
. ALIGN
alignment
Increase the alignment constraint for the load region from 4 to
.alignment
must be a positive power of 2. If the load region has aalignment
then this must bebase_address
aligned. If the load region has aalignment
+
then the linker aligns the calculated base address of the region to anoffset
boundary.alignment
This can also affect the offset in the ELF file. For example, the following causes the data for
FOO
to be written out at 4k offset into the ELF file:FOO +4 ALIGN 4096
NOCOMPRESS
- RW data compression is enabled by default. The
NOCOMPRESS
keyword enables you to specify that the contents of a load region must not be compressed in the final image. OVERLAY
The
OVERLAY
keyword enables you to have multiple load regions at the same address. ARM tools do not provide an overlay mechanism. To use multiple load regions at the same address, you must provide your own overlay manager.The content is placed at a fixed address that does not change after linking. The content might overlap with other regions designated as
OVERLAY
regions.PI
-
This region is position independent. The content does not depend on any fixed address and might be moved after linking without any extra processing.
Note
PI
is not supported for AArch64 state.Note
This attribute is not supported if an image contains execute-only sections. PROTECTED
The
PROTECTED
keyword prevents:- Overlapping of load regions.
- Veneer sharing.
- String sharing with the
--merge
option.
RELOC
-
This region is relocatable. The content depends on fixed addresses. Relocation information is output to enable the content to be moved to another location by another tool.
Note
RELOC
is not supported for AArch64 state.