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

~ (Author) "The basic job of any linker or loader is simple: It binds more abstract names to more concrete names which permits programmers to write code..." (more)
Key Phrases: relocation entries, optimizing linker, relocation item, Text Data, The Linux, Microsoft Windows (more...)

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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."Â—Guy Steele -- Review

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Product Details

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1st 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: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #86,234 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in these categories: (What's this?)
#9 in Books > Computers & Internet > Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence > Neural Networks
#10 in Books > Computers & Internet > Programming > Languages & Tools > Compilers

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
The basic job of any linker or loader is simple: It binds more abstract names to more concrete names which permits programmers to write code using the more abstract names. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
relocation entries, optimizing linker, relocation item, other shared libraries, linkable files, slop space, static shared libraries, hardware relocation, relocation entry, import address table, slim binaries, stub library, relocation types, jump table entry, bss segment, global symbol table, compiler driver, dynamic linker, dynamic shared libraries, global offset table, char pad, linked shared libraries, symbol resolution, incremental linking, stub libraries

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Text Data, The Linux, Microsoft Windows

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Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats

Citations (learn more)

This book cites 4 books:

Inside the Java Virtual Machine (Java Masters Series) by Bill Venners in Back Matter
Programming Perl (3rd Edition) by Larry Wall in Back Matter
Compiler Construction for Digital Computers by David Gries in Back Matter
Perl for Dummies (Fourth Edition) by Paul Hoffman in Back Matter

11 books cite this book:

Virtual Machine Design and Implementation C/C++ by Bill Blunden on page 655
Programming From The Ground Up by Jonathan Bartlett on page 234
Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis: Second International Conference, ATVA 2004, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC, October 31 - November 3, 2004. Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science) by Farn Wang on page 229
Invasive Software Composition by Uwe Assman in Back Matter
Architecting Dependable Systems III (Lecture Notes in Computer Science / Programming and Software Engineering) (v. 3) by Rog�rio de Lemos on page 231

See all 11 books citing this book

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Customer Reviews

17 Reviews

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

Average Customer Review

3.6 out of 5 stars (17 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shines a light on an obscure subject, January 12, 2000

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

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.

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17 of 17 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)

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.

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24 of 27 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

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.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars decent
Overall this book provides decent coverage on linker technology, covering several popular object formats. Read more

Published 23 months ago by Clark

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-have book
As far as I'm aware, this is the only book on the market that covers this subject. Clearly this book will be of use to someone that is starting on writing a link editor (or any... Read more

Published on September 3, 2007 by Paul Floyd

3.0 out of 5 stars too abstract
maybe it's not the book's fault and instead it's my lack of sufficient background, but this book is hard to understand because of its lack of examples.

Published on February 15, 2006 by Xu Ke

4.0 out of 5 stars clear explanation of concepts
Whatever the hardware and operating system you are using, Levine offers a general explanation of what a linker and loader do. Read more

Published on October 28, 2005 by W Boudville

5.0 out of 5 stars Helpful
This particular book had all the information I needed to know to make a COFF standard linker.

Published on October 28, 2005 by David Scott Hall

3.0 out of 5 stars Very superficial; OK as an introduction
Nothing much to add to that. Well written, good illustrations, all's good, but too superficial and cursory. Read more

Published on January 5, 2003 by J Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
This is one of the excellent book, that gives enormous information to know how object files are created and how linker in various OS works.

Published on September 24, 2001 by Navin Kumar Vedagiri

4.0 out of 5 stars This book was interesting for me
This book was quite interesting for me. Of course, it is not a comprehensive manual, but it is very helpful in understanding of some quite basic OS features. Read more

Published on March 13, 2001 by Artem Mouraviev

1.0 out of 5 stars A Respectiable Failure of a Book
I purchased this book so that I might learn more about the linking process. I had hoped that I could write my own simple linker to help facilitate my understanding. Read more

Published on March 10, 2001 by antigrav

1.0 out of 5 stars Too many omissions to be useful, too general to instruct
Despite its name and cover copy, this book is simply an introduction to object file formats. The actual discussion of linkers and loaders explains only the basic concepts (as... Read more

Published on March 2, 2001 by JK Oregon

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