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The linker may be integrated with other toolchain tools such that the user does not interact with the linker directly. A simpler version that writes its output directly to memory is called the loader, though loading is typically considered a separate process. [1] [2]
The majority of the work of linking is done at the time the application is loaded (load time) or during execution (runtime). Usually, the necessary linking program, called a dynamic linker or linking loader, is actually part of the underlying operating system. (However, it is possible, and not exceedingly difficult, to write a program that uses ...
The dynamic loader calculates the address referred to by a global variable and stores the value in such global variable; this triggers copy-on-write of a memory page containing such global variable. Pages with code and pages with global variables that do not contain pointers to code or global data remain shared between processes.
Relocation is typically done by the linker at link time, but it can also be done at load time by a relocating loader, or at run time by the running program itself. Some architectures avoid relocation entirely by deferring address assignment to run time; as, for example, in stack machines with zero address arithmetic or in some segmented ...
The linker and loader handle this the same way as for kinds of other object files. Static library files may be linked at run time by a linking loader (e.g., the X11 module loader). However, whether such a process can be called static linking is controversial.
An ELF file has two views: the program header shows the segments used at run time, whereas the section header lists the set of sections.. In computing, the Executable and Linkable Format [2] (ELF, formerly named Extensible Linking Format) is a common standard file format for executable files, object code, shared libraries, and core dumps.
In computing, a dynamic linker is the part of an operating system that loads and links the shared libraries needed by an executable when it is executed (at "run time"), by copying the content of libraries from persistent storage to RAM, filling jump tables and relocating pointers. The specific operating system and executable format determine ...
Relocation is the process of adjusting these references, and is done either by the linker or the loader. In general, relocation cannot be done to individual libraries themselves because the addresses in memory may vary depending on the program using them and other libraries they are combined with.