PPT Slide
Linking & Loading a Process
- Various steps are required to take the source code of a program and make it runnable (Figure 10.2).
- Compiler produces object modules (in UNIX: “.o” files; in DOS/WIN: “.obj” files).
- Object module formats are varied; Figures 10.3, 10.4 & 10.4 demonstrate a typical format containing:
- Header - directory of the rest of the file contents.
- Machine code - compiler-generated machine code; the code references in here are relative.
- Initialized data - globals that have compile-time values.
- Uninitialized data - globals that do not have compile-time values (and thus no space allocated in object file).