Re: GNU strip fails to set sh_link and sh_info on Solaris SPARC64

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Libor,

> Unfortunately the above code does not work for the following reasons:
>
> - sections are already created in that point of code
> - symbol filtering requires output sections to be created
> - cannot find bfd_remove_section function that could handle it

> However, this code removes the sections unconditionally regardless of whether 
> .symtab is kept or not. I can image that GNU strip could be called in two 
> passes: the first pass could remove .symtab and .strtab sections; the second 
> pass would strip .SUNW_sym*sort sections if .symtab section was stripped in the 
> first pass. A big disadvantage is that it introduces double performance 
> overhead... Any ideas?

A few - but all untested...

  * Create a hook in elf64-sparc.c for the elf_backend_section_processing() 
function
    and have it change the section's type to SHT_NULL, so that they are ignored.
    (But still present which would be bad...)

  * Alternatively maybe the elf_backend_always_size_sections() can be used to 
detect
    empty symbol tables and eliminate the special sections.

  * Or the elf_backend_begin_write_processing() function could adjust the 
section
    header table to skip the offendng sections.

  * Add code to objcopy.c:is_strip_section_1 () that identifies these sections 
and
    returns TRUE if their symbol section is empty.

Cheers
  Nick