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2.6.2 Section output

Any program that creates or combines sections (e.g., the assembler and linker) must use the asection fields output_section and output_offset to indicate the file sections to which each section must be written. (If the section is being created from scratch, output_section should probably point to the section itself and output_offset should probably be zero.)

The data to be written comes from input sections attached (via output_section pointers) to the output sections. The output section structure can be considered a filter for the input section: the output section determines the vma of the output data and the name, but the input section determines the offset into the output section of the data to be written.

E.g., to create a section "O", starting at 0x100, 0x123 long, containing two subsections, "A" at offset 0x0 (i.e., at vma 0x100) and "B" at offset 0x20 (i.e., at vma 0x120) the asection structures would look like:

section name "A" output_offset 0x00 size 0x20 output_section -----------> section name "O" | vma 0x100 section name "B" | size 0x123 output_offset 0x20 | size 0x103 | output_section --------|