From: root AT jacob DOT remcomp DOT fr (root) Subject: Bad executable and stripped/unstripped exes 4 Apr 1997 17:16:00 -0800 Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: Content-Type: text Original-To: gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Guenther was kind enough to send me an executable that doesn't work. The problem seems to be that the sections of the executable are not in ascending order: We have First text, bss and data sections. So far all OK. text is at 4096 0x1000 bss is at 8192 0x2000 data is at 12288 0x3000 then we have the .stab and the .stabstr sections. ..stab at 24576 0x6000 ..stabstr at 28672 0x7000 and THEN the resources section. ..rsrc at 20480 0x5000 The system expects a contiguous image. Since the type of the debug info is 'NOT LOADABLE' this would leave a hole in the image and the system refuses to load a thing like that. Fixes: 1 Change the type of the stabs section from 'NOT LOADABLE' to LOADABLE. This horrible hack would multiply your memory consumption with a lot of strings like: /pizza/mushroom/noer/beta17/build and many other funny things... (By the way noer, we all know you like mushroom pizza by now... I think it is NOT necessary to write it in all executables produced by gcc...:-) The debug section would be loaded into memory, but since there are no pointers to it this would be harmless. Of course, instead of having a memory usage of say, 300K, your program would occupy maybe 3MB. 2 Fix ld. The resources section should come after the data section in the header. This is a MAJOR undertaking however. But I have an idea. Since Cygnus sells support of gcc, I can sell support of 'ld' to Cygnus isn't it? Dear Cygnus people: I do not have a penny and I would like to have some money to buy ... say mushroom pizza. (I know you will understand this). So please make me an offer and I'll fix all your 'ld' misgivings. Yours sincerely -- Jacob Navia Logiciels/Informatique 41 rue Maurice Ravel Tel 01 48.23.51.44 93430 Villetaneuse Fax 01 48.23.95.39 France - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".