12:10 <jmi2k> Hello! I want to load an ELF file with OpenOCD but I want to skip sections like .bss and .heap (basically, those marked as NOLOAD in my linker script). Apparently, OpenOCD is clearing those areas, which is quite slow depending on the .heap size. Is there something I'm not understanding? Can it be done?

12:19 <dinkelhacker> Have you checked the program headers of your elf? Are these sections in a segment that doesn't have a LOAD type?

12:30 <jmi2k> I'm fairly sure it is in a NOLOAD segment, but I'll tell you for sure later

12:46 <jmi2k> yeah, for some reason it ends up in the LOAD segment. Hold on, I will try to solve that

12:56 <dinkelhacker> I think the easiest way to test would be to quickly define a new segment in the MEMORY section and assign the sections with NOLOAD to that. I guess right now all your sections go into the same segemnt and if some of the are LOAD sections the whole segmement becomes LOAD. At least that would be my educated guess :)

12:59 <jmi2k> That's my current hypothesis, thanks for confirming it's a valid thing to consider haha

13:43 <dinkelhacker> did it work?

13:47 <jmi2k> I'm trying to get a solution I'm happy with. Ideally, I'd want NOLOAD regions to follow LOAD regions in the same memory region.

13:47 <jmi2k> OTOH, I found that changing the definition I had for the heap space works well enough as a stopgap solution (as zeroing the heap memory area from OpenOCD is, by far, the biggest offender when it comes to load time)