GNU ASM .section directive not working/linker issue - ld

Question

I'm trying to move my _start function to 0x0, as it is the bootloader.
Flash ROM exists from 0x0 to the first 128MB (=1Gb), other memory is DDR3 RAM but we will map RAM to 0x80000000 to 0xFFFFFFFF.
The issue is with the directive .section ".vect", the _start address is not going into the .vect section, it is going into the .text section.
_start:
.section ".vect" /* I've tried .section .vect and I've tried moving above _start */
b ResetHandler
b UndefHandler
b SVC_Handler
b PrefetchAbortHandler
b DataAbortHandler
b NotUsedHandler
b IRQ_Handler
b FIQ_Handler
1:
b 1b /* Hang and don't return */
In my linker script, the MEMORY command and then the start of SECTIONS is:
MEMORY
{
vect (rx) : o = 0x0, l = 1M
rom (rx) : o = 1M, l = 127M
ram (wx) : o = 0x80000000, l = 0x80000000
}
SECTIONS
{
.vect : ALIGN(64)
{
. = 0x0;
*(.vect*)
VectTableEnd = .;
VectTableSize = SIZEOF(.vect);
} > vect
.... (.text, .bss, .data, .stack, etc are other SECTIONS entries)
}
But no matter what, the _start assembly function code gets shoved into the standard .text section, not at address 0x0. Does anyone know what I'm going wrong?
The code is targetted at bare-metal ARMv7A machines, compiled/linked with arm-none-eabi-as/ld
Cheers.

Answer 1

No surprises here if your _start label ends up in .text:
/* implicitly default section .text */
_start:
/* still the same section .text */
.section .vect
/* explicitly the section .vect */
b ResetHandler
You probably want to switch the section before defining the _start label to make that label end up in the intended section.
/* implicitly default section .text */
.section .vect
/* explicitly the section .vect */
_start:
b ResetHandler
Using the name _start as the symbol for a vector table is a bit weird (I would have expected a symbol like __vectors or vector_table), but that is beyond the scope of this question.