Re: Linkers - making executables smaller

Jerry Leichter <leichter@smarts.com> wrote:


>"Classic Unix" linkers were probably about as minimalist as any you
>can find after the early 60's. They cause a great deal of pain for
>developers of languages with more sophisticated type and execution
>models than C and FORTRAN, for which they were designed - hence name
>mangling and "munch" (for static initializer support) in C++
>implementations. I think the trend has (finally) reversed.


Most UNIX linkers cause pain even for C and Fortran implementors. I
used linkers in the late 1960s and early 1970s that supported
link-time type checking, multiple initializations, unrestricted
link-time expressions in initializations, iterated initializations,
first definition wins, and more. The ELF linker is the
third-generation of UNIX linkers, it is a huge improvement over its
predecessors, and it is pathetic compared to linkers that were
available in the early 1970's. The linkers of the 1960s and 1970s did
tend to be slow, but remember, in those days 1 megabyte of core was
considered to be (and physically was) enormous.


Sincerely,
Bob Corbett
--

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