Thank you. Yes now I think I understand. I had a follow up question. You state:

">As we saw above, a simple program resulted in 2 different relocation entries just to compose the address of 1 variable. We saw:

R_OR1K_AHI16 R_OR1K_LO_16_IN_INSN"

Can you say why two relocations are needed? I understand the address of x is not known until link time however what would the second relocation be for?

Also is there a good reference for deciphering the relocation names?

Hello, There are 2 relocations because the series of instructions that needs to create a 32-bit memory address requires HI16 and LO_16 relocations. The 2 relocations sure 16-bit high and low bitfields to compose the 32-bit address.

For a full list of relocation types see the list in the last few links of the article. Note, the OpenRISC relocations are not all well documented.

I see, the relocations happen in pairs then - lower order and high order bits. Is that correct?

Yes, for OpenRISC as there are no instructions with a 32-bit immediate so we use 2 high and low order relocations. However, on machines like x86 they have variable width instructions and support 32-bit relocations, they can get by with a single relocation entry.