linux 生成可执行文件的链接过程和原理

2.2 Overview of Linkers and the Linking Process

Figure 2.2 illustrates how different tools take various input files and generate appropriate output files to ultimately be used in building an executable image.

Figure 2.2: Creating an image file for the target system.

The developer writes the program in the C/C++ source files and header files. Some parts of the program can be written in assembly language and are produced in the corresponding assembly source files. The developer creates a makefile for the make utility to facilitate an environment that can easily track the file modifications and invoke the compiler and the assembler to rebuild the source files when necessary. From these source files, the compiler and the assembler produce object files that contain both machine binary code and program data. The archive utility concatenates a collection of object files to form a library. The linker takes these object files as input and produces either an executable image or an object file that can be used for additional linking with other object files. The linker command file instructs the linker on how to combine the object files and where to place the binary code and data in the target embedded system.