[I don't think it's off-topic at all] Linking speed for C++

[Richard Henderson]

On Tue, May 22, 2001 at 11:54:01AM -0700, Joe Buck wrote:
> > So is there some reason why the KDE shared libs can't be linked with
> > `-Bsymbolic'?  Would linking them with `-Bsymbolic' improve startup times?
> > Has anyone tried this?
> 
> It won't suffice because a relocation will still be needed: the vtable
> entries point to absolute addresses.

While it's true that it does not completely eliminate the
dynamic relocation, it does (or should) eliminate a symbol
lookup -- eg an R_386_32 relocation should be replaced by
an R_386_RELATIVE relocation which is considerably simpler
to process.

> That's why I made a proposal for an optional modified vtable
> format, which would incorporate the equivalent of -Bsymbolic.

Also worth persuing in the 3.1 timeframe...



r~