Advice on linker script creation and verification

Question

Long story short. I wish to learn how to create a good linker script so that should I change platforms/architectures/vendors, I'm not stuck at ground zero again with not knowing what to do. I'm not concerned with the difficulty of the task, so much as understanding it.

I've started a sort of project, as it were, to create a base or skeleton for programing and developing on STM's 32-bit Cortex-M3 chips. With the help of jsiei97 Beginning with the STM32F103RB (I also have a TI Stellaris LM3S828, but that's another issue), without the need of a licensed IDE. Since I am a student, and most students can't afford such things.

I understand that there's the ODev, and Eclipse Plugins and what not, and have read various blogs, wikis, docs/man pages and most projects provide you with a linker script with little to know explanation as to why and where things have been defined.

I've compiled an arm-none-eabi toolchain for the STM32 but where I get hung up is in the linker script. CodeSourcery also requires one as well. I have a basic concept of how to create them and their syntax after reading the gnu man pages, but I simply haven't a clue where to start with putting in the various extra sections apart from the obvious .text, .bss and .data.

I created a rudimentary version but I get linking errors asking for section definitions and that's where I get stuck. I know how to define them, but knowing if what I'm doing is even close to right is the problem.

Answer 1

I have a simple linker script I reuse regularly across platforms, just change some addresses as needed.

http://github.com/dwelch67/

There are a number of samples many with gcc samples and most of those have linker scripts.

MEMORY
{
   rom : ORIGIN = 0x00000000, LENGTH = 0x40000
   ram : ORIGIN = 0x10000000, LENGTH = 30K
}

SECTIONS
{
   .text : { *(.text*) } > rom
   .bss  : { *(.bss*) } > ram
}