Hi Alan,

> On Fri, Feb 14, 2020 at 10:30:47AM +0000, Nick Clifton wrote:
>>   As part of this process I also discovered that the BFD library would
>>   unconditionally convert OS-specific and PROC-specific section indices
>>   into SHN_ABS indices when writing out symbol tables,

> That sounds like a bug that should be fixed for all ELF targets and
> not via a target hook.  
I have checked in this patch to resolve this particular problem.  I do not 
think that the code has to worry about the sign extension of the special
values as this has been handled by the definitions in elf/internal.h.

Cheers
  Nick

bfd/ChangeLog
2020-02-20  Nick Clifton  <nickc@redhat.com>

	* elf-bfd.h (struct elf_backend_data): Add symbol_section_index
	callback.
	* elfxx-target.h (elf_backend_symbol_section_index): Provide
	default definition.
	(elfNN_bed): Initialise the symbol_section_index field.
	* elf.c (swap_out_syms): Call symbol_section_index, if defined, on
	OS and PROC specific section indicies.  Warn if converting other
	reserved incidies to SHN_ABS.