Object file formats, compilers and linkers

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jan  9, 2001, "JB" <jamesb@northnet.com.au> wrote:

> I'm interested in how a compiler writes a relocatable object file

GCC doesn't.  It just outputs assembly code.  It's the assembler's job
to create a relocatable object file.

> and how a linker messes with these to produce an executable file.

> Is there some kind of easy to read (i.e. plain English)
> documentation on various object and executable file formats, for the
> novice?

There's a very good book on this subject, called Linkers & Loaders (or
something alike), but I heard it's out of print :-(

-- 
Alexandre Oliva   Enjoy Guarana', see http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat GCC Developer                  aoliva@{cygnus.com, redhat.com}
CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp        oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist    *Please* write to mailing lists, not to me