order of linker sections in output file

An option would be to use the HIGH location specifier in the .version sections statement.  By default, the linker allocates sections from low to high addresses.  The HIGH specifier will instruct the linker to allocate from high to low addresses.  This may not be exactly what you want, but please review the below user's guide for more options.

.version : > FLASH (HIGH)

The ARM assembly language tools user's guide describes the attributes of the HIGH specifier in Section 7.5.4.2.3.

Based on your suggestion, I read the documentation for the HIGH specifier, and concluded that it won’t accomplish our goal.  I tested the option too and, as expected, it inflates the binary output file to max size of the flash memory.

For some necessary background, please see this wiki article.

To have an output section be allocated last, then you need to GROUP all the output sections for that memory range, placing the special section last of all.  This is a bit of overkill.  You don't care about the ordering of the other output sections, as long as .version goes last.  But GROUP is the only way to do it.

Thanks and regards,

-George

Alright, so I implemented the concept of the wiki article and I got mixed results.  My new section was placed last, however, the compression didn't work and the output binary nearly doubled in size.

Here is the output from the build:

warning #10229-D: output section ".data" refers to load symbol "_nop" and hence
   cannot be compressed; compression "rle" is ignored

Here is my new linker command file:

SECTIONS
{
    GROUP
    {
        .intvecs :   > 0x00000000   /* INTERRUPT VECTORS              */
        .text    :   > FLASH        /* CODE                           */
        .const   :   > FLASH        /* CONSTANT DATA                  */
        .cinit   :   > FLASH        /* INITIALIZATION TABLES          */
        .pinit   :   > FLASH        /* TEMPLATE INITIALIZATION TABLES */
        .version :   > FLASH
    }

    .vtable  :   > 0x20000000   /* INTERRUPT VECTORS              */
    .data    :   > SRAM
    .bss     :   > SRAM         /* GLOBAL & STATIC VARS           */
    .sysmem  :   > SRAM         /* DYNAMIC MEMORY ALLOCATION AREA */
    .stack   :   > SRAM         /* SOFTWARE SYSTEM STACK          */
}