PE/COFF: raise normal PE section limit safely

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Project / Subsystem

binutils / pe/coff

Date

2026-07-14

Proposer

Oleg Tolmatcev <oleg.tolmatcev@gmail.com>

Source type

public_inbox

Consensus

Proposed

Sentiment

—/10

Technical tradeoffs

• Increasing the section limit improves compatibility with modern toolchains but requires careful handling of existing code and special section values to avoid breaking existing functionality.

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All attributes

project: binutils
subsystem: pe/coff
patch_id: —
discussion_id: 20260714202348.1105-2-oleg.tolmatcev@gmail.com
source_type: public_inbox
title: PE/COFF: raise normal PE section limit safely
headline: PE/COFF: raise normal PE section limit safely
tldr: Increases the maximum number of sections in PE/COFF objects from 32767 to 65279 by using unsigned 16-bit integers for section numbers.
proposer: Oleg Tolmatcev <oleg.tolmatcev@gmail.com>
consensus: Proposed
outcome: proposed
sentiment_score: —
technical_tradeoffs: • Increasing the section limit improves compatibility with modern toolchains but requires careful handling of existing code and special section values to avoid breaking existing functionality.
series_id: —
series_role: cover
series_parts: []
tags: • binutils
• pe/coff
• elf
• linker
• sections
url: https://inbox.sourceware.org/binutils/20260714202348.1105-2-oleg.tolmatcev@gmail.com
bugzilla_url: —
date: 2026-07-14T00:00:00.000Z

PE/COFF: raise normal PE section limit safely

Oleg Tolmatcev proposes raising the section limit in PE/COFF objects from 32,767 to 65,279. This change is necessary because binutils currently uses signed 16-bit integers for symbol section numbers, whereas modern compilers like MSVC and Clang support a larger unsigned range. The patch modifies BFD to handle section numbers as unsigned values while preserving special constants, and includes a new gas test case to verify the functionality.