Linkers and Loaders (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Software Engineering and Programming) [Paperback]

John R. Levine (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1558604960 | ISBN-13: 978-1558604964 | Publication Date: October 25, 1999 | Edition: 1

Whatever your programming language, whatever your platform, you probably tap into linker and loader functions all the time. But do you know how to use them to their greatest possible advantage? Only now, with the publication of Linkers & Loaders, is there an authoritative book devoted entirely to these deep-seated compile-time and run-time processes.
The book begins with a detailed and comparative account of linking and loading that illustrates the differences among various compilers and operating systems. On top of this foundation, the author presents clear practical advice to help you create faster, cleaner code. You'll learn to avoid the pitfalls associated with Windows DLLs, take advantage of the space-saving, performance-improving techniques supported by many modern linkers, make the best use of the UNIX ELF library scheme, and much more. If you're serious about programming, you'll devour this unique guide to one of the field's least understood topics. Linkers & Loaders is also an ideal supplementary text for compiler and operating systems courses.

*Includes a linker construction project written in Perl, with project files available for download. *Covers dynamic linking in Windows, UNIX, Linux, BeOS, and other operating systems.
*Explains the Java linking model and how it figures in network applets and extensible Java code.
*Helps you write more elegant and effective code, and build applications that compile, load, and run more efficiently.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Written for any programmer who works with compiled code, Linkers and Loaders surveys today's hardware platforms with a tour of how code is linked and executed on IBM mainframes, Unix, and Windows. This handy title fills a valuable niche for anyone who wants to understand how programs are built and run on today's computing systems.

It's the cross-platform perspective that distinguishes this book. The author's wide-ranging perspective on IBM 370 mainframes, RISC platforms like the SUN SPARC and, of course, Microsoft Windows makes this book a commendable reference on the internals of linkers and program execution in each environment. There's also a digestible guide to the computer architecture (including registers, instruction formats, and memory addressing) for each platform. (Unix programmers will be pleased that the book has more information on non-Windows platforms than on Windows itself.) For C++ programmers, this text gives you a glimpse into the internals of such language features as macros, templates, and name mangling, and how linkers deal with them at build time.

The book closes with useful material on static libraries and dynamic linking, plus a short tour of Java and its class loader (which can resolve classes on the fly as they are downloaded over the Internet). Short exercises are provided for each chapter, making this a useful resource for both classroom and self-study on what is an often overlooked topic. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: History of linkers and loaders, application binary interfaces (ABIs), computer architecture basics, big- and little-endian memory addresses, register and instruction formats for IBM 370, SPARC and Intel x86, paging and virtual memory, position independent code (PIC), Intel x86 segmentation, embedded architectures, object files for DOS COM and EXE files, Unix a.out, Unix ELF, IBM 360 object format, Microsoft Portable Executable (PE) format, Intel Object Module Format (OMF), storage allocation, linking details for C++, symbol management, name mangling, weak and strong references, debugging information, library formats, COFF and ELF formats, relocation, loading and overlays, bootstrap loading, shared libraries, dynamic linking for Unix ELF and Microsoft Windows DLLs, advanced linking techniques for C++, and linking in Java.

Review

"I enjoyed reading this useful overview of the techniques and challenges of implementing linkers and loaders. While most of the examples are focused on three computer architectures that are widely used today, there are also many side comments about interesting and quirky computer architectures of the past. I can tell from these war stories that the author really has been there himself and survived to tell the tale."-Guy Steele

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1 edition (October 25, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558604960
• ISBN-13: 978-1558604964
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #245,365 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #17 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > Compilers
  • #33 in Books > Computers & Technology > Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence > Neural Networks

More About the Author

See my tediously corporate home page at http://www.johnlevine.com and my blog at http://weblog.johnlevine.com. Then rush back and buy lots of books, please.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shines a light on an obscure subject, January 11, 2000

By 

Joshua R. Poulson (Ridgefield, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Linkers and Loaders (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Software Engineering and Programming) (Paperback)

I picked up this book to delve into interesting problems with a loader that I work with and was amazed at the great story told of what happens to your code after it goes through that compiler and becomes an object. It's not done yet, folks.

This book covers a broad range of topics, after first explaining the basics and architecture gotchas, to all the phases from the back end of the compiler to a program running in memory. Three example platforms are used to illustrate this journey: Intel x86 and 32-bit Windows, UltraSPARC and Solaris, and the IBM 360/370. However, it touches upon a great deal other challenges and formats.

Some might consider the symbolic journey from source code to running program to be equivalent to Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" but Levine's book makes it more like a guided tour at a Disney Theme park. There are wonderful examples and code snippets. Clear diagrams and excellent writing.

My only complaint about this book is that the back cover makes a lot of noise about Java, but the material inside is pretty paltry alongside the more developed material on C, FORTRAN, and C++ issues. Java is really not that complicated or important to Linkers and Loaders.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars not exactly what I was expecting., January 4, 2005

By 

Andrew Whitworth - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Linkers and Loaders (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Software Engineering and Programming) (Paperback)

For what this book is, it is good. but, for what I expected it to be, it is a little lackluster. I was expecting a book that would explain linking and loading, provide code examples, and teach the subject systematically. What this book is however, is a simple technical reference. It talks about what things are, and the particulars of all the different file formats and architectures. It provides no code (and no pseudo-code) to demonstrate any of the concepts.

The book does however provide several excercises at the end of each chapter that will test the programmer, and it also has a main project: each chapter prompts the reader to construct, and add to a sample linker, which the book claims should be written in Perl, although perl is never talked about in the book, and no perl code is ever provided. Since Perl code is never used in the problems, and no solutions in perl are provided in the book (they are on the website, however), it would work just as well for a programmer to use any language that they felt comfortable with, such as C/C++ or Java.

my feelings are mixed. on one hand this book is an excellent reference on a subject that rarely sees any light. if I may quote a passage: "But all the linker writers in the world could probably fit in one room, and half of them already have copies [of this book]." Clearly the audience for this topic isnt particularly large, and so it seems that linkers and loaders will remain a bit of a black art, even though this book does shed some light on the most basic concepts involved. However, this book only contains concepts, and it asks the reader to view external sources for the specifics, and it asks the programmer to have a firm grasp on their knowledge of programming, but also computer architecture.

I give this book 4 stars because it is one of the best (one of the only) books on the topic, but I hope that future versions of this book (or even a competing title) will shed more light, and provide more specific examples (including specific code examples) on this confusing topic.

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More of a pamphlet on linkers and loaders than a book, April 19, 2001

By 

"oberon46" (Plano, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Linkers and Loaders (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Software Engineering and Programming) (Paperback)

If you're just looking for a piece of literature to get you started thinking about understanding linkers, this is the book for you. However, if you actually want to write your own linker, you'd best find another book. This book covers all of the popular object and executable file formats such as COFF, ELF, and OMF, but it never really goes in depth or gives any example code, which is exactly what a programmer needs to really get what's going on. Even some pseudocode would've been nice. The only thing I particularly enjoyed about this book was the author's sense of humor, which is a rare thing in the realm of technical books. John Levine pokes fun at himself several times throughout the book, acknowledging that linker programmers are a rare breed indeed - Too bad he couldn't have written a more complete book on linkers, I would've given him a much better review.