Order of compilation/link between DS5 and Arm Dev Studio

My name is Stephen and I work at Arm.

I believe that I've found the solution.  I suspect the original DS-5 project was subtly modified and setup as follows:

1. Select project > Properties > C/C++ Build > Settings > Arm Linker

2. In Expert settings: Command line pattern, change
${COMMAND} ${FLAGS} ${OUTPUT_FLAG} ${OUTPUT_PREFIX}${OUTPUT} ${INPUTS}
to
${COMMAND} ${FLAGS} ${OUTPUT_FLAG} ${OUTPUT_PREFIX}${OUTPUT}
(i.e. remove " ${INPUTS}")

3. Then select Arm Linker > Miscellaneous.
Under Other flags, add
--via=makefile.armlink.exe.inputs

This seems to produce the desired behavior.

If you need more help then I suggest you log-in to the Support > Arm Support Services from the links at the top of this page, and create a Case for the Support team to investigate further.

Hope this helps

Stephen

My name is Stephen and I work at Arm.

I believe that I've found the solution.  I suspect the original DS-5 project was subtly modified and setup as follows:

1. Select project > Properties > C/C++ Build > Settings > Arm Linker

2. In Expert settings: Command line pattern, change
${COMMAND} ${FLAGS} ${OUTPUT_FLAG} ${OUTPUT_PREFIX}${OUTPUT} ${INPUTS}
to
${COMMAND} ${FLAGS} ${OUTPUT_FLAG} ${OUTPUT_PREFIX}${OUTPUT}
(i.e. remove " ${INPUTS}")

3. Then select Arm Linker > Miscellaneous.
Under Other flags, add
--via=makefile.armlink.exe.inputs

This seems to produce the desired behavior.

If you need more help then I suggest you log-in to the Support > Arm Support Services from the links at the top of this page, and create a Case for the Support team to investigate further.

Hope this helps

Stephen

That's definitely the right direction: It's now outputting the .inputs file however, it's overwriting it on project build so I'm losing changes. I can bypass the problem by overwriting the .inputs after launching the project build locally, but that's not a useable solution on the certified build environment (everything is done through scripts so I can't just swap a file out). Any idea of how to keep the file if it already exists or read an unmanaged file into the link step?

Hi again,

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by "It's now outputting the .inputs file".  

I'd assumed "makefile.armlink.exe.inputs" was a static file that you had made by hand, containing the objects in the order you need them.  

In my test, I created a "makefile.armlink.exe.inputs" file with a text editor, put it in the root of the project, then added "--via=../makefile.armlink.exe.inputs" to the linker's miscellaneous flags.  I don't see this file being updated or overwritten.

You can get an initial list of all the objects as a starting point by temporarily restoring " ${INPUTS}" to the Command line pattern, then rebuilding, and looking at the final linker build step in the Console view.

If you need more help then I suggest you log-in to the Support > Arm Support Services from the links at the top of this page, and create a Case for the Support team to investigate further.

Stephen

I mean it literally will generate the .inputs file if one doesn't exist and overwrite it if does. I didn't use the relative include though: I'm using "--via=makefile.armlink.exe.inputs" so the file is living in the Release configuration's folder, so maybe that's why it's getting (re)generated? The workaround to keep changes was to simply make the file read-only. Simple but does the job.

Okay, so I just tried it with a relative file "--via=../makefile.armlink.exe.inputs" and it does NOT create or modify the file in that case. So the right answer is to wipe out the ${INPUTS} and make sure the argument for "--via" is outside the build configuration's directory. Thanks for the help!

The minor tweak from Stephen's prior answer:

1. Select project > Properties > C/C++ Build > Settings > Arm Linker