[HN Gopher] A deep dive into how linkers work (2008)
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       A deep dive into how linkers work (2008)
        
       Author : thunderbong
       Score  : 178 points
       Date   : 2024-08-22 02:47 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (lwn.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (lwn.net)
        
       | skywal_l wrote:
       | [2008]
       | 
       | But these articles are gold (no pun intended) so always good to
       | see a refresh on HN front page.
        
       | weinzierl wrote:
       | This is one of my most favourite article series and had so many
       | eye openers for me. I also think there is no other resource,
       | neither internet nor elsewhere, that has all this information in
       | one place. I really wished Ian made a book out of it.
        
         | karma_fountain wrote:
         | The book Linkers and Loaders by John R. Levine is pretty good.
        
           | kibwen wrote:
           | Is there anything in this article series that's not in
           | Linkers And Loaders?
        
         | boffinAudio wrote:
         | I've printed-to-PDF all 20 chapters and have my own book of it
         | now. My only desire is that Ian made a single-page-with-all-
         | chapters view of it available...
        
       | perchlorate wrote:
       | Someone linked to a Calibre recipe that assembles everything into
       | one ebook. Here is the result if anyone else needs it:
       | 
       | https://www.mediafire.com/folder/b8fdqx7eqcpdl/linker
       | 
       | or
       | 
       | https://0x0.st/Xycy.azw3
       | 
       | https://0x0.st/Xyct.epub
       | 
       | https://0x0.st/Xycv.mobi
       | 
       | https://0x0.st/Xycw.pdf
        
         | fruffy wrote:
         | Thanks. It looks like this includes comments which blows up the
         | page count dramatically. A little unfortunate.
        
           | perchlorate wrote:
           | It's pretty easy to remove them by adding one line to the
           | recipe and re-fetching:
           | 
           | https://www.mediafire.com/folder/u84s3art26lni/no-comments
        
             | fruffy wrote:
             | Great, thanks!
        
       | canucker2016 wrote:
       | The dev who worked on the lld and mold linkers turned the dial to
       | 11...
       | 
       | LLD (part of LLVM):
       | https://llvm.org/devmtg/2017-10/slides/Ueyama-lld.pdf
       | 
       | MOLD linker:
       | https://github.com/rui314/mold/blob/main/docs/design.md
       | 
       | Apple released a new linker that's in the same ballpark as mold -
       | see following link for previous discussion -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36218330
        
         | haberman wrote:
         | I always take this as inspiration that the performance quest is
         | rarely over. LLD was specifically designed to be fast, as was
         | Gold which came before it. But Mold blew them both away.
        
       | InDubioProRubio wrote:
       | https://www.airs.com/blog/archives/51
       | 
       | Pattermatching on assembler code and rearranging and reusage of
       | sequences..
        
       | kuharich wrote:
       | Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27445981
        
       | xyst wrote:
       | I can see why linkers were created, especially in a time of
       | constrained memory. But given an abundance of memory in modern
       | systems, are linkers even necessary anymore?
       | 
       | As a matter of fact, aren't these shared libraries a supply chain
       | attack vector (ie, xz attack that was thwarted earlier this
       | year)?
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-22 17:00 UTC)