Problem with __start_SECNAME symbol generated by GNU linker

[Martin Ünsal]

Hi all,

I have a bug which appears to be GNU toolchain related. I reported
this bug to LTTng mailing list here:

http://lists.lttng.org/pipermail/lttng-dev/2014-April/022950.html

The root cause appears to be a change in the way the GNU linker treats
the __start_SECNAME symbol, which occured between 4.6.4 and 4.7.2. The
only documentation for this feature that I was able to find was on
gcc-help mailing list:

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-help/2010-04/msg00113.html

I have some questions:

1) Is __start_SECNAME feature documented in more detail anywhere?
2) Why did the __start_SECNAME symbol move from local to global scope
between 4.6.4 and 4.7.2?

Any other insight into this issue would be very helpful.

Thanks,
Martin