A PE section has a VirtualSize of 0, and a tool skips or misreads it

Symptoms

A tool that maps or patches a PE file finds no code, finds no room in a section, or computes a size of 0. peinfo shows a section with size 0x0.

Cause

Some linkers, Watcom's among them, leave VirtualSize (Misc_VirtualSize) at 0 and set only SizeOfRawData (observed in POD's WINPOD.EXE). Windows then maps SizeOfRawData bytes. A tool that trusts VirtualSize sees an empty section.

What to do

Where VirtualSize is 0, use SizeOfRawData. GameFrame's peinfo, vtable and relocs do this. tests/run.sh checks peinfo and vtable on the sample game. peinfo marks the section (raw size: VirtualSize 0). A patch script that looks for room in a section must do the same.