Re: [PATCH] PE/COFF: raise normal PE section limit safely
Project / Subsystem
binutils / pe/coff
Date
2026-07-01
Proposer
Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com>
Source type
public_inbox
Consensus
Proposed
Sentiment
—/10
Technical tradeoffs
- • Increases the maximum number of sections supported in PE/COFF files, aligning with modern compiler capabilities.
- • Ensures compatibility by preserving special section number values while adopting unsigned interpretation for normal sections.
All attributes
- project
- binutils
- subsystem
- pe/coff
- patch_id
- —
- discussion_id
- c30158ee-1917-47e9-b4e4-b7755f42a9ec@suse.com
- source_type
- public_inbox
- title
- Re: [PATCH] PE/COFF: raise normal PE section limit safely
- headline
- PE/COFF: raise normal PE section limit safely
- tldr
- Discusses a patch to increase the PE section limit from 32767 to 65279 by using unsigned 16-bit integers.
- proposer
- Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com>
- consensus
- Proposed
- outcome
- proposed
- sentiment_score
- —
- technical_tradeoffs
-
- • Increases the maximum number of sections supported in PE/COFF files, aligning with modern compiler capabilities.
- • Ensures compatibility by preserving special section number values while adopting unsigned interpretation for normal sections.
- series_id
- —
- series_role
- standalone
- series_parts
- []
- tags
-
- • binutils
- • PE/COFF
- • linker
- • sections
- • Windows
- bugzilla_url
- —
- date
- 2026-07-01T00:00:00.000Z
Re: [PATCH] PE/COFF: raise normal PE section limit safely
Jan Beulich expresses minor concerns about a patch that aims to increase the maximum number of sections in PE/COFF files from 32767 to 65279. The original patch by Oleg Tolmatcev uses unsigned 16-bit integers for section numbers, which aligns with MSVC and Clang capabilities and preserves special section identifiers. Beulich’s specific concern relates to the implementation details of pe_decode_sym_section_number and how it handles the unsigned conversion.