> No need, "align 0" has always meant "word aligned" for traditional 
> > compatibility with old assemblers (pre gas).
> 
> Is that 2-byte of 4-byte here?

.align 0 always give 4-byte alignment.

> The 'pc' value when the 'bx pc' is done MUST be a multiple of 4.

> Apparantly (inspite of what the ARM ARM may have said) some cpus
> don't ignore bit 1 of the pc when doing pc relative loads - so
> find all your constants rotated by 16 bits :-)

Eh?  Can you cite examples?

> If (many) of the syscall hooks are in one file, making the final sequence:
> 
>     swi nnn
>     bxcc lt
>     b __go_cerror
> 
> __go_cerror:
>     ldr r12,=__cerror
>     bx r12
> 
> saves a few bytes and makes each hook 16 bytes - so they fit niceley
> into cache lines. 

But costs an extra non-predictable branch (very expensive on XScale).  I'm 
not suggesting that we should look at something like this, but the cost 
has to be borne in mind.

> Now work out the optimal order for the hooks, then
> get the .balign 32 to work (it doesn't in the arm a.out build I've used).

a.out object files on ARM only maintain the sections to 4-byte alignment, 
so will ignore attempts to force greater alignment.  The linker simply 
concatenates each similar section ensuring that they start on a 4-byte 
boundary.

R.