AVR Freaks

Clawson, cool down please.
In my case, as always, bootloader and main app are two separate applications, compiled separately. The main app uses bootloader code to save some space. But in C++ I cannot just use a vector table – class must be initialized, gcc must do some magical things, like copying class virtual method table into SRAM (because of stupidity of the compiler) and do some other magical stuff (e.g. initialization of static members and fields). All this stuff is done during executing code in .init sections. That’s why I must link the main app against precompiled obj file, with class code located at the appropriate address. The bootloader code is linked against the same obj file (or library file if you like).
The problem is that I need to use the attribute section with every class member, is it possible to specify the section attribute for the whole class?
Or maybe somebody has a better idea how to create class instance in main app, when class belongs to bootloader app?

Every advice is appreciated, especially yours.
But please focus on the main problem, the name of the section is not important. But because I must link the app with bootloader code, the boot code cannot be in the .text segment - .bootloader segment is fine.

Right, I cannot use static members, only static methods. But still I need to initialize class, because I use virtual methods, so gcc needs to generate a proper startup code.

Thanks skeeve, I’ve learnt a lot.
My first tests have shown that your solution works fine, and moreover I don’t need to define additional sections.
I will show what I’ve done, and please tell me if I’ve understood everything right.

First, I compiled the bootloader code, with text section relocated to bootloader address (for example 0x4000), I didn’t specify data nor bss section addresses, because the default ones are ok.
Next, I stripped the main symbol, because it will be redefined by main app, and produce the stripped elf file, which I used for the next step.
Next, I’ve compiled the main app, with stripped bootloader elf file, which provides the symbols necessary to link the application. I didn’t specify the text, data, nor bss section addresses, because the default ones are ok – now text points to address 0.
As result, I’ve obtained the application elf file (or hex) which contains only the app code, and references to bootloader code, but don’t contain the bootloader code itself, because it will be preloaded into AVR FLASH memory.
I’ve inspected the resulting map file, and everything seems to be fine, I have to check if static members and virtual methods will be referenced properly.
Have I done everything right?
Thanks again, you are really great.

Ok, finally I’ve found a solution – not perfect, but working.
I link everything like in description above, but main app has moved data segment beyond addresses occupied by static members and VMT of bootloader classes. It’s a waste of space if not all bootloader classes are used by app code (only if unused classes are virtual or have static data members), but due to limitations of current gcc version I can’t see any other solution.
The only problem is VMT – it must be copied from FLASH into SRAM, because avr-gcc can only use VMT located in SRAM (a known bug, but developers are resistant to fix it). The code which copies VMT is located in startup scripts, so bootloader must be executed first. From bootloader one can start execution of normal app by jumping to address 0 – so app startup scripts are executed too – the copied data is not overlapping because app’s data segment is moved. So bootloader classes VMT and static members are properly initialized, the same app’s code.
So either app and bootloader can use virtual inheritance and static members, in fact it can use global variables, and even more - global and static members can be shared with app code.
Of course one can modify startup code, so __do_copy_data and __do_clear_bss can be called as a subroutine. In that case the bootloader code can be initialized just by calling these two functions.
Any suggestions are welcome.