Re: Efficiently setting up large quantities of constant data

["Dr. Adrian Wrigley" <amtw@linuxchip.demon.co.uk.uk.uk>]

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 14:24:01 +0000, Vinzent 'Gadget' Hoefler wrote:

> Dr. Adrian Wrigley wrote:
> 
>> I presume this needs to be done at the linker stage, but I don't
>> see any options to link in non-object files.
> 
> You could give "objcopy" a try. It can convert a binary file into an
> object file which could then be linked normally.

This is exactly what I've been looking for!  Thanks!

It gives the necessary symbols to access the data from Ada with
a pragma import, AFAICT.  It looks like the equivalent on Windows
is to use a Resource Compiler.  Getting a "constant" view of the
data from Ada should be simple (but I haven't tested it).

(extract of objcopy man page on Linux):

--binary-architecture=bfdarch
  Useful when transforming a raw binary input file into an object file.
  In  this  case  the  output architecture  can  be  set  to  bfdarch. 
  This option will be ignored if the input file has a known bfdarch. You can
  access this binary data inside a program by referencing the special
  symbols  that are   created   by  the  conversion  process. These  symbols
  are  called  _binary_objfile_start, _binary_objfile_end and
  _binary_objfile_size.  e.g. you can transform a picture file into an
  object file and then access it in your code using these symbols.
-- 
Adrian