Cflink ColdFire Linker (preliminary)
rev. 0.98


1. GENERAL

The ColdFire Linker , cflink, is a freeware linker for ColdFire processors.

The job of the linker is to take all the object files required to make an executable 
program and join them together.  During the linking process, it will match all the 
references between object files so that the final executable is complete.

1.1 Command Line Options

Usage: cflink [options] files -o outputfile

Options: 	-r<address>	ROM option. Address is a 32-bit start address for the ROM
				in hexadecimal.
		-i		Output build information.


The usual format for linking looks like this;

	cflink  startup.o  myprogram.o lib.o  -o myprogram.prg 

Where;

-	cflink is the name of the linker.

-	startup.o is the name of the startup object code module for use with 
		GeckoOS.

-	myprogram.o is the name of your program object file. You can have more
		than one object file here.

-	lib.o is the general set of library functions.

-	myprogram.prg is the name of the program file.


The files you need to supply are that of the 'myprogram.o' which should have been 
produced from a Compiler or Assembler.  All ".o" object files need to be in the 
GeckoOS object code format. If you used cfcc (ColdFire C Compiler) or cfasm 
(ColdFire Assembler - with the object output option enabled) then you would use the 
results from these programs. 

Using the ROM option will produce only code and data binary output instead of the 
block file format. XREF (external references) and XDEF (external definitions) will be 
resolved, so that the code can be run in place.



2. Error messages

Error messages are meant to be self-explanatory. The general error messages that 
you may encounter are;

File not found					One of the required files could not be found

File <name> is not an object file		The file <name> is not a valid GeckoOS object 
						code file.You should check the output options for 
						the assembler or the name of the file you 
						supplied.

Byte relative out of range for reference <name>
Word relative out of range for reference <name>	The variable <name> was used in a manner that 
						puts it outside the range for either byte or word 
						addressing modes. You need to change the 
						model size for the source file.

Reference <name> not found			A reference was made to the variable <name> 
						but it was not found in any of the object files. 
						You need to check for correct spelling in your 
						files, or that the library contains the reference.

Merged data >64k				This results because of an overflow in the small 
						data model. All data combined from the object 
						files must not exceed 65536 bytes in size. (Once 
						the large data model is available, this may fix the 
						problem).
						This does not refer to the size of the code, but 
						rather the 'data' contained in each object file, 
						such as tables or text. Code size can 
						theoretically be as large as 2Gigabytes.


3. Limitations

·	The linker does not currently support real libraries. This will be added in the 
	major update.

·	The linker only supports the small data model. Code size has no restrictions, 
	only the merged data size must be less than 64kbytes (i.e. All the data 
	contained in each object file, not code, must add up to less than 64kbytes).
	
	You can circumvent this with assembler files by using the 'section code' option 
	rather than 'section data' for large data items.

·	The linker does not support S-Record yet.


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	All rights reserved.

	www.defiant.com.au