This is a new feature where the linker will automatically divide the code into load segments, creating as many segments as necessary to fit it. This relieves the programmer from the need to manually figure out how a large program can be divided into segments.
Auto-segmentation is triggered by the use of the special load segment name AUTOSEG~~~. Using this approach (rather than a flag in the OMF header) allows auto-segmentation to be used with all existing languages that provide a mechanism for specifying load segment names.
This would happen if a later object segment had a more restrictive alignment than previous object segments that contribute to the same load segment, as in the following example:
s1 start
jsl s2
rtl
end
align 256
s2 start
rtl
end
These alignment requirements can be satisfied by just giving the load segment the most restrictive alignment of any object segment (since all alignments are powers of 2) and inserting space as necessary to align the code from each object segment.
Stephen Heumann
Kelvin Sherlock
mikew50