[LLVMdev] Need to create symbols only once

[Shankar Easwaran]

Hi Nick,

On 12/7/2012 4:59 PM, Nick Kledzik wrote:
>
> We have a similar requirement in darwin's ld64 linker, but even more general.  Any binary can do the following to introspect itself:
>
> struct stuff { int a; int b; };
>
> extern struct stuff*  stuff_start  __asm("section$start$__DATA$__my");
> extern struct stuff*  stuff_end   __asm("section$end$__DATA$__my");
>
> void examineSection() {
> 	const struct stuff* p;
> 	for (p = stuff_start; p < stuff_end; ++p) {
> 		// do stuff with p
> 	}
> }
>
> That is, there are magic symbol names which reference the beginning or ending of any particular section.   To support this, the linker lazily creates atoms when references to these magic symbols are discovered during resolving.
>
> I have some hooks for this already in place in lld:
>
> 1) There is Writer::addFiles().  This method gives any writer a change to add files/atoms to the set of atoms the Resolver works on.   The Writer::addFiles() method is called after all input files are added.  If you want to add something lazily (like darwin linker does for section$start$ symbols), the writer returns a File object akin to a static library.  That it, it provides no initial atoms, but can provide atoms as a last resort (so an .o files would override it).  The WriterMachO already uses the addFiles() method to add CRuntime symbols.
>
> 2) DefinedAtom::ContentType already has typeFirstInSection and typeLastInSection.  These are intended to be used for the content type of the atoms which represent the magic symbols for the start and end of a section.  The key here is that the Pass (not written yet) which sorts atoms, knows to sort these atoms to the start or end of their respective sections.
>
> If you don't want this full general, lazy approach, you could have your WriteELF::addFiles() return a regular object file that has atoms named __bss_start and __bss_end, but they are marked mergeAsWeak so that any user defined atoms will override them.
The case I have is a bit different now. I added symbols 
__bss_start/__bss_end/_end using WriterELF::addFiles(). The symbols get 
overridden appropriately but the value of the symbols are known only 
after the sections have been merged and the virtual addresses assigned 
to those symbols.

So when I am trying to write these atoms to the output file, I want to 
set the value of these symbols to the values computed by the ELF Writer.

These atoms are NativeAtoms and i dont see a function to set the value 
of the atom, How do I go about accomplishing this functionality.

Thanks

Shankar Easwaran

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