Hello,

In our embedded (bare metal) projects we use C preprocessor statements such as #ifdef and #include in our linker scripts and produce the final linker script through a prebuild step. This greatly simplifies linker script customization/configuration and enables us to use the same linker script template in many projects. This technique also seems to be used in various other embedded frameworks and projects.

As creating a proper prebuild step is not simple (see also here) it would be nice if VGDB supports this feature directly. I can think of several ways to integrate that:

a) Define a file extension for the linker script source file, e.g. .ldsrc, and if such a file is present in the project, run it through gcc -E -P to produce a .ld file which gets passed to the linker. Also pass all -D and -I options to gcc that are normally used for C++ compilation.

b) In a normal C++ project you can open properties on a file item and then set Item Type to “Custom Build Tool”. This adds a “Custom Build Tool” property sheet to the dialog where you can configure tool details. The Custom Build Tool feature seems not to be available in VGDB. Making it available could also solve the problem. However, I’m not sure if include path and preprocessor definitions can be accessed as required.

c) Add a new Yes|No option named “Pre-process Linker Script” to the linker settings. If the option is set to Yes, the script that is specified in the “Linker Script” option will run through gcc -E -P (plus all -D and -I options) before it gets passed to the linker.

Udo