Source files missing from ELF symbol table - how to include them?

Question

I am working with a project that was handed off to me and some of the building and linking concepts are new to me. I have a makefile, several assembly and C source files, an ELF file and binary file. When I load the ELF file onto my target, I am only able to step-through the C files, not the assembly files.

When I do a readelf on the ELF file, I see that the assembly (.S) files are missing from the symbol table. Likewise, my debugger (RealView Debugger 4.1) doesn't list those .S files in the "sources from image" tree. I can see that some of the symbols from those files are included (i.e. label names) in my readelf output, but not the file type symbols themselves. I've been going over the makefile to try to spot what may be failing to include them, but I'm not sure what I'm looking for. Can anyone please point me in the right direction? Thanks!

Check that you're passing the -g option to armasm in your Makefile. — Pete Fordham
@PeteFordham, thanks, I did check and I am using -g with both the assembler and C compiler. — Rich

dinesh dinesh · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-03T00:45:25

You mentioned using the RealView debugger so I'm making an educated guess that you have RVDS. If so, have you tried using the readelf equivalent that ships with RVDS, fromelf. I have no way to confirm this now but I recall there were subtle differences between assembly code generated by the ARM compiler and gcc.

Source files missing from ELF symbol table - how to include them?

1 Answers