[Bug binutils/24942] New: objcopy: Add option for setting section alignment

[profclonk at gmail dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24942

            Bug ID: 24942
           Summary: objcopy: Add option for setting section alignment
           Product: binutils
           Version: 2.33 (HEAD)
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P2
         Component: binutils
          Assignee: unassigned at sourceware dot org
          Reporter: profclonk at gmail dot com
  Target Milestone: ---

Created attachment 11965
  --> https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=11965&action=edit
Patch for adding --set-section-alignment

When using the old trick¹ of using objcopy to convert arbitrary binary files
into ELF (".o") files for including e.g. pictures or fonts into program memory,
objcopy currently always sets the alignment of the produced ELF section to "1".
When linking this file, the contained binary data can end up at an address that
is not properly aligned, which might render it inaccessible for word-wise
access or even DMA (on embedded targets).

Therefore, I would like to propose adding a command line option to objcopy to
set the alignment of the produced section. Please see the attached git patch
file for a possible implementation. It adds an option "--set-section-alignment
<name>=<align>" that works much like "--set-section-flags", but expects a
simple integer as "<align>". The specified alignment will override the
alignment of the input section (if any).

Could this be included in the official binutils code?

1:
https://mcuoneclipse.com/2018/01/27/converting-a-raw-binary-file-into-an-elf-dwarf-file-for-loading-and-debugging/

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