[quote user="Mike Stich"] this assumes .cinit will always be last[/quote]
[quote user="Mike Stich"]can I rely on that to stay true long term?[/quote]
In most cases in practice, the .cinit section will be the last one allocated to FLASH. However, that is not guaranteed. If you need to guarantee it, the only solution is to use GROUP as described above, and just live with the .cinit section not getting compressed.
Since that is not very nice, I filed SDSCM00050442 in the SDOWP system to request an enhancement to the linker. The entry requests a method to capture the last location used in a memory range in a symbol. Feel free to follow it with the SDOWP link below in my signature.
Thanks and regards,
-George