From owner-freebsd-hackers  Wed Feb 14 04:55:01 1996
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To: Gianluca Dini <gianluca@iet.unipi.it>
cc: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: shared libraries and dynamic linking 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 14 Feb 1996 10:14:05 +0100."
             <199602140914.KAA03848@dini.iet.unipi.it> 
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 04:49:26 -0800
Message-ID: <6748.824302166@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
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> i would like to use shared libraries and dynaminc linking under
> freebsd as a case-study for students. unfortunately, the only
> information that i've got so far is that reported by "man" that,
> for this purpose, is insufficient. what i'm looking for is a
> complete description about how they work and their
> architecture. i'm not sure whether this is the right place to
> make this request.

Seriously, for what you wish to do there's really only one place to
look:

	/usr/src/gnu/usr.bin/ld/

You should be able to study the operation of the linker in detail by
running builds of some small shared library in /usr/src/lib with
`cc -v' to show the calling sequence and flags, then trace through
the source and see what it's actually doing.  The runtime relocation
done for shared executables can be similarly understood by reading
through /usr/src/gnu/usr.bin/ld/rtld/

Good luck!

					Jordan