jalr issue about riscv-asm-manual HOT 3 CLOSED

Perhaps you meant to use jal? jal takes a 20-bit offset. jalr takes a reg plus 12-bit offset. We don't allow symbols with jalr as it isn't useful, this would be x0 as the base register plus a 12-bit offset which can only work if the target is in the low 4KB of memory which is rather unlikely. jal with a symbol is allowed and gives a 1MB range which is enough to be useful.

If you really want jalr, you can use
jalr ra, %lo(puts)(x0)

The standard way to do a call is to use the call macro
call puts
This expands to
c: 00000097 auipc ra,0x0
c: R_RISCV_CALL puts
c: R_RISCV_RELAX ABS
10: 000080e7 jalr ra # c <main+0xc>
where the R_RISCV_CALL reloc puts the high part of the address offset in the auipc and the low part in the jalr, and the linker will relax this to a jal if in range. We unfortunately don't have assembler syntax to generate this directly, so you have to use the call macro. There is also a tail macro for tail calls.

from riscv-asm-manual.

But note that
jalr ra, %lo(puts)(x0)
will silently fail if puts is not in the low 4KB of memory.

from riscv-asm-manual.

thanks @jim-wilson

from riscv-asm-manual.