ld(1) GNU Development Tools ld(1) NAME ld - the GNU linker SYNOPSIS ld [-o output] objfile... ------ ------- [-Aarchitecture] [-b input-format] [-Bstatic] ------------ ------------ [-Bdynamic] [-Bsymbolic] [-c commandfile] [--cref] ----------- [-d|-dc|-dp] [-defsym symbol = expression] [-e entry] ------ ---------- ----- [-embedded-relocs] [-E] [-export-dynamic] [-F] [-F format] [-format input-format] [-g] [-G size] ------ ------------ ---- [--help] [-i] [-lar] [-Lsearchdir] [-M] [-Map -- --------- mapfile] [-m emulation] [-n|-N] [-noinhibit-exec] ------- --------- [-no-keep-memory] [-oformat output-format] ------------- [-R filename] [-relax] [-r|-Ur] [-rpath directory] -------- --------- [-rpath-link directory] [-S] [-s] [-shared] --------- [-sort-common] [-split-by-reloc count] ----- [-split-by-file] [-T commandfile] [-Ttext textorg] ----------- ------- [-Tdata dataorg] [-Tbss bssorg] [-t] [-u sym] [-V] ------- ------ --- [-v] [--verbose] [--version] [-warn-common] [-warn-constructors] [-warn-multiple-gp] [-warn-once] [--whole-archive] [--no-whole-archive] [--wrap symbol] [-X] [-x] ------ DESCRIPTION ld combines a number of object and archive files, relo- cates their data and ties up symbol references. Often the last step in building a new compiled program to run is a call to ld. ld accepts Linker Command Language files to provide ex- plicit and total control over the linking process. This man page does not describe the command language; see the `ld' entry in `info', or the manual ld: the GNU linker , --- --- --- ------ for full details on the command language and on other as- pects of the GNU linker. This version of ld uses the general purpose BFD libraries to operate on object files. This allows ld to read, com- bine, and write object files in many different formats-- for example, COFF or a.out. Different formats may be linked together to produce any available kind of object file. You can use `objdump -i' to get a list of formats supported on various architectures; see objdump(1). Aside from its flexibility, the GNU linker is more helpful than other linkers in providing diagnostic information. Many linkers abandon execution immediately upon encounter- ing an error; whenever possible, ld continues executing, allowing you to identify other errors (or, in some cases, to get an output file in spite of the error). The GNU linker ld is meant to cover a broad range of situ- cygnus support 17 August 1992 1 ld(1) GNU Development Tools ld(1) ations, and to be as compatible as possible with other linkers. As a result, you have many choices to control its behavior through the command line, and through envi- ronment variables. OPTIONS The plethora of command-line options may seem intimidat- ing, but in actual practice few of them are used in any particular context. For instance, a frequent use of ld is to link standard Unix object files on a standard, support- ed Unix system. On such a system, to link a file hello.o: $ ld -o output /lib/crt0.o hello.o -lc This tells ld to produce a file called output as the re- sult of linking the file /lib/crt0.o with hello.o and the library libc.a which will come from the standard search directories. The command-line options to ld may be specified in any or- der, and may be repeated at will. For the most part, re- peating an option with a different argument will either have no further effect, or override prior occurrences (those further to the left on the command line) of an op- tion. The exceptions--which may meaningfully be used more than once--are -A, -b (or its synonym -format), -defsym, -L, -l, -R, and -u. The list of object files to be linked together, shown as objfile, may follow, precede, or be mixed in with command- ------- line options; save that an objfile argument may not be ------- placed between an option flag and its argument. Usually the linker is invoked with at least one object file, but other forms of binary input files can also be specified with -l, -R, and the script command language. If no binary input files at all are specified, the linker -- does not produce any output, and issues the message `No input files'. Option arguments must either follow the option letter without intervening whitespace, or be given as separate arguments immediately following the option that requires them. -Aarchitecture ------------ In the current release of ld, this option is useful only for the Intel 960 family of architectures. In that ld configuration, the architecture argument is ------------ one of the two-letter names identifying members of cygnus support 17 August 1992 2 ld(1) GNU Development Tools ld(1) the 960 family; the option specifies the desired output target, and warns of any incompatible in- structions in the input files. It also modifies the linker's search strategy for archive libraries, to support the use of libraries specific to each particular architecture, by including in the search loop names suffixed with the string identifying the architecture. For example, if your ld command line included `-ACA' as well as `-ltry', the linker would look (in its built-in search paths, and in any paths you specify with -L) for a library with the names try libtry.a tryca libtryca.a The first two possibilities would be considered in any event; the last two are due to the use of `-ACA'. Future releases of ld may support similar function- ality for other architecture families. You can meaningfully use -A more than once on a command line, if an architecture family allows com- bination of target architectures; each use will add another pair of name variants to search for when -l specifies a library. -b input-format ------------ Specify the binary format for input object files that follow this option on the command line. You don't usually need to specify this, as ld is con- figured to expect as a default input format the most usual format on each machine. input-format is ------------ a text string, the name of a particular format sup- ported by the BFD libraries. -format input-format ------------ has the same effect, as does the script command TARGET. You may want to use this option if you are linking files with an unusual binary format. You can also use -b to switch formats explicitly (when linking object files of different formats), by including -b input-format before each group of object files in a ------------ particular format. The default format is taken from the environment variable GNUTARGET. You can also define the input cygnus support 17 August 1992 3 ld(1) GNU Development Tools ld(1) format from a script, using the command TARGET. -Bstatic Do not link against shared libraries. This is only meaningful on platforms for which shared libraries are supported. -Bdynamic Link against dynamic libraries. This is only mean- ingful on platforms for which shared libraries are supported. This option is normally the default on such platforms. -Bsymbolic When creating a shared library, bind references to global symbols to the definition within the shared library, if any. Normally, it is possible for a program linked against a shared library to override the definition within the shared library. This op- tion is only meaningful on ELF platforms which sup- port shared libraries. -c commandfile ----------- Directs ld to read link commands from the file com- ---- mandfile. These commands will completely override -------- ld's default link format (rather than adding to it); commandfile must specify everything necessary ----------- to describe the target format. You may also include a script of link commands di- rectly in the command line by bracketing it between `{' and `}' characters. --cref Output a cross reference table. If a linker map file is being generated, the cross reference table is printed to the map file. Otherwise, it is printed on the standard output. -d -dc -dp These three options are equivalent; multiple forms are supported for compatibility with other linkers. Use any of them to make ld assign space to common symbols even if a relocatable output file is speci- fied (-r). The script command cygnus support 17 August 1992 4 ld(1) GNU Development Tools ld(1) FORCE COMMON ALLOCATION has the same effect. - - -defsym symbol = expression ------ ---------- Create a global symbol in the output file, contain- ing the absolute address given by expression. You ---------- may use this option as many times as necessary to define multiple symbols in the command line. A limited form of arithmetic is supported for the ex- --- pression in this context: you may give a hexadeci- -------- mal constant or the name of an existing symbol, or use + and - to add or subtract hexadecimal con- stants or symbols. If you need more elaborate ex- pressions, consider using the linker command lan- guage from a script. -e entry ----- Use entry as the explicit symbol for beginning ex- ----- ecution of your program, rather than the default entry point. for a discussion of defaults and oth- er ways of specifying the entry point. -embedded-relocs This option is only meaningful when linking MIPS embedded PIC code, generated by the -membedded-pic option to the GNU compiler and assembler. It caus- es the linker to create a table which may be used at runtime to relocate any data which was statical- ly initialized to pointer values. See the code in testsuite/ld-empic for details. -E -export-dynamic When creating an ELF file, add all symbols to the dynamic symbol table. Normally, the dynamic symbol table contains only symbols which are used by a dy- namic object. This option is needed for some uses of dlopen. ------- -F -Fformat ------ Some older linkers used this option throughout a compilation toolchain for specifying object-file format for both input and output object files. ld's mechanisms (the -b or -format options for in- put files, the TARGET command in linker scripts for output files, the GNUTARGET environment variable) are more flexible, but but it accepts (and ignores) cygnus support 17 August 1992 5 ld(1) GNU Development Tools ld(1) the -F option flag for compatibility with scripts written to call the old linker. -format input-format ------------ Synonym for -b input-format. ------------ -g Accepted, but ignored; provided for compatibility with other tools. -G size ---- Set the maximum size of objects to be optimized us- ing the GP register to size under MIPS ECOFF. Ig- ---- nored for other object file formats. --help Print a summary of the command-line options on the standard output and exit. This option and --ver- sion begin with two dashes instead of one for com- patibility with other GNU programs. The other op- tions start with only one dash for compatibility with other linkers. -i Perform an incremental link (same as option -r). -lar Add an archive file ar to the list of files to -- -- link. This option may be used any number of times. ld will search its path-list for occurrences of libar.a for every ar specified. -- -- -Lsearchdir --------- This command adds path searchdir to the list of --------- paths that ld will search for archive libraries. You may use this option any number of times. The default set of paths searched (without being specified with -L) depends on what emulation mode ld is using, and in some cases also on how it was configured. The paths can also be specified in a link script with the SEARCH DIR command. - -M Print (to the standard output file) a link map-- diagnostic information about where symbols are mapped by ld, and information on global common storage allocation. cygnus support 17 August 1992 6 ld(1) GNU Development Tools ld(1) -Map mapfile ------- Print to the file mapfile a link map--diagnostic ------- information about where symbols are mapped by ld, and information on global common storage alloca- tion. -m emulation --------- Emulate the emulation linker. You can list the --------- available emulations with the --verbose or -V op- --------- -- tions. This option overrides the compiled-in de- fault, which is the system for which you configured ld. -N specifies readable and writable text and data sec- tions. If the output format supports Unix style magic numbers, the output is marked as OMAGIC. When you use the `-N' option, the linker does not page-align the data segment. -n sets the text segment to be read only, and NMAGIC is written if possible. -noinhibit-exec Normally, the linker will not produce an output file if it encounters errors during the link pro- cess. With this flag, you can specify that you wish the output file retained even after non-fatal errors. -no-keep-memory The linker normally optimizes for speed over memory usage by caching the symbol tables of input files in memory. This option tells the linker to instead optimize for memory usage, by rereading the symbol tables as necessary. This may be required if the linker runs out of memory space while linking a large executable. -o output ------ output is a name for the program produced by ld; if ------ this option is not specified, the name `a.out' is used by default. The script command OUTPUT can al- so specify the output file name. -oformat output-format ------------- Specify the binary format for the output object cygnus support 17 August 1992 7 ld(1) GNU Development Tools ld(1) file. You don't usually need to specify this, as ld is configured to produce as a default output format the most usual format on each machine. out- ---- put-format is a text string, the name of a particu- ---------- lar format supported by the BFD libraries. The script command OUTPUT FORMAT can also specify the - output format, but this option overrides it. -R filename -------- Read symbol names and their addresses from file- ----- name, but do not relocate it or include it in the ---- output. This allows your output file to refer sym- bolically to absolute locations of memory defined in other programs. -relax An option with machine dependent effects. Current- ly this option is only supported on the H8/300. On some platforms, use this option to perform glob- al optimizations that become possible when the linker resolves addressing in your program, such as relaxing address modes and synthesizing new in- structions in the output object file. On platforms where this is not supported, `-relax' is accepted, but has no effect. -r Generates relocatable output--i.e., generate an output file that can in turn serve as input to ld. This is often called partial linking. As a side ------- effect, in environments that support standard Unix magic numbers, this option also sets the output file's magic number to OMAGIC. If this option is not specified, an absolute file is produced. When linking C++ programs, this option will not resolve ---- --- references to constructors; -Ur is an alternative. This option does the same as -i. -rpath directory --------- Add a directory to the runtime library search path. This is used when linking an ELF executable with shared objects. All -rpath arguments are concate- nated and passed to the runtime linker, which uses them to locate shared objects at runtime. The -rpath option is also used when locating shared ob- jects which are needed by shared objects explicitly included in the link; see the description of the -rpath-link option. If -rpath is not used when linking an ELF executable, the contents of the en- cygnus support 17 August 1992 8 ld(1) GNU Development Tools ld(1) vironment variable LD RUN PATH will be used if it - - is defined. The -rpath option may also be used on SunOS. By default, on SunOS, the linker will form a runtime search patch out of all the -L options it is given. If a -rpath option is used, the runtime search path will be formed exclusively using the -rpath op- tions, ignoring the -L options. This can be useful when using gcc, which adds many -L options which may be on NFS mounted filesystems. -rpath-link directory --------- When using ELF or SunOS, one shared library may re- quire another. This happens when an ld -shared link includes a shared library as one of the input files. When the linker encounters such a dependency when doing a non-shared, non-relocateable link, it will automatically try to locate the required shared li- brary and include it in the link, if it is not in- cluded explicitly. In such a case, the -rpath-link option specifies the first set of directories to search. The -rpath-link option may specify a se- quence of directory names either by specifying a list of names separated by colons, or by appearing multiple times. If the required shared library is not found, the linker will issue a warning and continue with the link. -S Omits debugger symbol information (but not all sym- bols) from the output file. -s Omits all symbol information from the output file. -shared Create a shared library. This is currently only supported on ELF and SunOS platforms (on SunOS it is not required, as the linker will automatically create a shared library when there are undefined symbols and the -e option is not used). -sort-common Normally, when ld places the global common symbols in the appropriate output sections, it sorts them by size. First come all the one byte symbols, then cygnus support 17 August 1992 9 ld(1) GNU Development Tools ld(1) all the two bytes, then all the four bytes, and then everything else. This is to prevent gaps be- tween symbols due to alignment constraints. This option disables that sorting. -split-by-reloc count ----- Trys to creates extra sections in the output file so that no single output section in the file con- tains more than count relocations. This is useful ----- when generating huge relocatable for downloading into certain real time kernels with the COFF object file format; since COFF cannot represent more than 65535 relocations in a single section. Note that this will fail to work with object file formats which do not support arbitrary sections. The link- er will not split up individual input sections for redistribution, so if a single input section con- tains more than count relocations one output sec- ----- tion will contain that many relocations. -split-by-file Similar to -split-by-reloc but creates a new output section for each input file. -Tbss org --- -Tdata org --- -Ttext org --- Use org as the starting address for--respectively-- --- the bss, data, or the text segment of the output file. textorg must be a hexadecimal integer. ------- -T commandfile ----------- Equivalent to -c commandfile; supported for compat- ----------- ibility with other tools. -t Prints names of input files as ld processes them. -u sym Forces sym to be entered in the output file as an --- --- undefined symbol. This may, for example, trigger linking of additional modules from standard li- braries. -u may be repeated with different option arguments to enter additional undefined symbols. -Ur For anything other than C++ programs, this option is equivalent to -r: it generates relocatable out- cygnus support 17 August 1992 10 ld(1) GNU Development Tools ld(1) put--i.e., an output file that can in turn serve as input to ld. When linking C++ programs, -Ur will ---- resolve references to constructors, unlike -r. --verbose Display the version number for ld and list the sup- ported emulations. Display which input files can and can not be opened. -v, -V Display the version number for ld. The -V option also lists the supported emulations. --version Display the version number for ld and exit. -warn-common Warn when a common symbol is combined with another common symbol or with a symbol definition. Unix linkers allow this somewhat sloppy practice, but linkers on some other operating systems do not. This option allows you to find potential problems from combining global symbols. -warn-constructors Warn if any global constructors are used. This is only useful for a few object file formats. For formats like COFF or ELF, the linker can not detect the use of global constructors. -warn-multiple-gp Warn if the output file requires multiple global- pointer values. This option is only meaningful for certain processors, such as the Alpha. -warn-once Only warn once for each undefined symbol, rather than once per module which refers to it. --whole-archive For each archive mentioned on the command line af- ter the --whole-archive option, include every ob- ject file in the archive in the link, rather than searching the archive for the required object files. This is normally used to turn an archive file into a shared library, forcing every object to be included in the resulting shared library. cygnus support 17 August 1992 11 ld(1) GNU Development Tools ld(1) --no-whole-archive Turn off the effect of the --whole-archive option for archives which appear later on the command line. --wrap symbol ------ Use a wrapper function for symbol. Any undefined ------- reference to symbol will be resolved to ------ wrap symbol. Any undefined reference to re- -- ------- -- al symbol will be resolved to symbol. ------- ------- -X Delete all temporary local symbols. For most tar- gets, this is all local symbols whose names begin with `L'. -x Delete all local symbols. ENVIRONMENT You can change the behavior of ld with the environment variable GNUTARGET. GNUTARGET determines the input-file object format if you don't use -b (or its synonym -format). Its value should be one of the BFD names for an input format. If there is no GNUTARGET in the environment, ld uses the natural for- mat of the host. If GNUTARGET is set to default then BFD attempts to discover the input format by examining binary input files; this method often succeeds, but there are po- tential ambiguities, since there is no method of ensuring that the magic number used to flag object-file formats is unique. However, the configuration procedure for BFD on each system places the conventional format for that system first in the search-list, so ambiguities are resolved in favor of convention. SEE ALSO objdump(1) `ld' and `binutils' entries in info ld: the GNU linker, Steve Chamberlain and Roland Pesch; --- --- --- ------ The GNU Binary Utilities, Roland H. Pesch. --- --- ------ --------- COPYING Copyright (c) 1991, 1992 Free Software Foundation, Inc. cygnus support 17 August 1992 12 ld(1) GNU Development Tools ld(1) Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified ver- sions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above con- ditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be included in translations approved by the Free Software Foundation instead of in the original En- glish. cygnus support 17 August 1992 13