How to place a variable at a given absolute address in memory (with Visual C++)

Question

How can I statically tell Visual C++ to place a global variable at a given absolute address in memory, like what __attribute__((at(address))) does?

Answer 1

It can be done but I don't believe there is a predefined way to do it so it will take some experimentation. Even though I don't see much benefit if you create your variable at run time just at the start of user code execution.

So first specify the section/segment where to init your variable using the allocate MS specific specifier. Then either start your application in real scenario, dump it or debug it and see where your variable appears. Watch for relocations (there is some ways to try to enforce no relocation but they are not guaranteed to be honored all the time). Another way is to use some code in your app like this one to find the address of the section you defined.

If you for some reason cannot get a consistent behavior you can use this utility to manipulate the virtual address of your object file. All in all except hurdles along the way but overall I don't see why you wouldn't be able to get it to work for your specific scenario if you are persistent enough.