Re: strip --strip-unneeded adds back section symbols

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Andrei,

> It appears that recent binutils (earliest version I have is 2.24)
> unconditionally add back section symbols when copying sections.

Please could you file a bug report about this in the binutils bugzilla system:

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/

> I verified that filter_symbols() in strip actually removes everything
> from source module, and symbol table reappears deep in call chain
> initiated by copy_section(), where STT_SECTION is unconditionally
> added for every present section.
>
> Was this change intentional?

Yes and no.  The change to add a section symbol to any newly created section 
was intentional.  This is helpful for a variety of reasons, not least being 
able to create relocations against that symbol.

The side effect of adding a symbol when actually trying to strip unneeded 
symbols was unintentional, and is a bug.  I have not investigated yet, but I 
suspect that the simplest solution will be to make strip rerun its symbol 
removing pass after having copied all of the sections.

Cheers
  Nick