Dear Albert ARIBAUD,
In message 4C93E978.9010508@free.fr you wrote:
u-boot.map for this board shows:
... arch/powerpc/lib/cache.o(.text) .text 0x40007c20 0x64 arch/powerpc/lib/cache.o 0x40007c20 flush_cache 0x00008000 . = DEFINED (env_offset)?env_offset:. *fill* 0x40007c84 0x37c 00 common/env_embedded.o(.ppcenv) .ppcenv 0x40008000 0x8000 common/env_embedded.o 0x40008000 environment 0x4000c000 redundand_environment *(.text) .text 0x40010000 0x4 common/env_embedded.o 0x40010000 env_size .text 0x40010004 0x0 lib/libgeneric.a(ctype.o) ...
So we are "wasting" 0x37c = 892 bytes of memory for an unused gap. The last changes where the object placing had to be changed due to code size etc. were commit 32482be6 (Feb 19, 2009), and before that fe57bb19 (Sep 18, 2002). Having to tweak this file every 7 years or so is something I'm considering to be acceptable. YMMV...
This is a simple alignment. I do not need to align code, I need to map *one* symbol, namely _start, at a given location, here 0xffff0000, so that the 64 KB sector which contains start is not wasted and the image resides in as few sectors as possible.
And I map *one* symbol, namely environment, at a given location, here 0x40008000.
It seems you are not willing or trying or able to understand. I give up here.
Viele Grüße,
Wolfgang Denk