Hello there

Rod Evans — Wednesday July 07, 2004

So, blogs seem popular, and a couple of folks have suggested I start one, so here it is. I've been at Sun for 15 years, most of that time developing and maintaining the linker-editors, various related tools, documentation, and building lots of software.

The link-editors start with ld(1), which takes various input from the compilers, and typically spits out a dynamic executable or share object. Then there's ld.so.1(1), the runtime linker, which takes a dynamic executable and combines it with its dependencies as part of executing a process. The utilities that compliment these processes include, crle(1), elfdump(1), pvs(1), and a bunch of support libraries, auditors, etc.

I maintain all related manual pages, and the Linker and Libraries Guide. This is one of the few manuals written by the engineers that maintain the code. The DTrace crew have followed this example, and have produced their own excellent documentation.

For those looking for link-editor information, I suggest starting with the latest and greatest, which at this point is the Solaris Linker and Libraries Guide. A good starting point is Link-Editor Quick Reference, a cheat sheet of the various objects that are created by the link-editor. From this section you can vector off to all sort of gory details. If you're not runing Solaris 10 yet (which you could if you used Solaris Express), don't worry. Appendix A - Linker and Libraries Updates and New Features itemizes the major changes from release to release, so you can always determine what is, or isn't available for your release.

But you might be running something newer than you think. The link-editors are delivered as part of the Solaris core OS, however we're always providing new features that are required by other utilities, such as the compliers. And the compilers are delivered asynchronously with various OS releases. Consequently we're always providing patches. And our patches are a snapshot of some of the latest bits available at the time the patch was created. Effectively, we only have one source base for the link-editors. Changes are made in one place, and integrated into the latest patches. Thus a patch to Solaris 8 or Solaris 9, SPARC and Intel, will be the same, and comprise of a snapshot of what's been integrated into Solaris 10. Again, the best place to find documentation is the Solaris Linker and Libraries Guide.

So, that completes this introduction. Hopefully I'll follow up with other postings, perhaps some clarification of existing practice, some new cheat-sheets, or other items that seem helpful. If you've got any comments, questions or advice for improvements, let us know. The door is always open, and we're always looking for ideas and feedback.

Oh yeah, you're supposed to get a little personal with this blog stuff aren't you? When I'm not working, I'm on a bike (road and mountain), or chasing my daughter around. And, having originated from the British Isles, a passion for real beer remains :-)

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