Using ld

The GNU linker

ld version 2

January 1994

Steve Chamberlain

Cygnus Support

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Table of Contents

• Overview
• Invocation
  • Command Line Options
  • Environment Variables
• Command Language
  • Linker Scripts
  • Expressions
    • Integers
    • Symbol Names
    • The Location Counter
    • Operators
    • Evaluation
    • Assignment: Defining Symbols
    • Arithmetic Functions
    • Semicolons
  • Memory Layout
  • Specifying Output Sections
    • Section Definitions
    • Section Placement
    • Section Data Expressions
    • Optional Section Attributes
    • Overlays
  • ELF Program Headers
  • The Entry Point
  • Version Script
  • Option Commands
• Machine Dependent Features
  • ld and the H8/300
  • ld and the Intel 960 family
• BFD
  • How it works: an outline of BFD
    • Information Loss
    • The BFD canonical object-file format
• Reporting Bugs
  • Have you found a bug?
  • How to report bugs
• MRI Compatible Script Files
• Index

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Copyright (C) 1991, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

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 versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also 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 conditions for modified versions.

Overview

ld combines a number of object and archive files, relocates their data and ties up symbol references. Usually the last step in compiling a program is to run ld.

ld accepts Linker Command Language files written in a superset of AT&T's Link Editor Command Language syntax, to provide explicit and total control over the linking process.

This version of ld uses the general purpose BFD libraries to operate on object files. This allows ld to read, combine, 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. See section BFD, for more information.

Aside from its flexibility, the GNU linker is more helpful than other linkers in providing diagnostic information. Many linkers abandon execution immediately upon encountering 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).

Invocation

The GNU linker ld is meant to cover a broad range of situations, and to be as compatible as possible with other linkers. As a result, you have many choices to control its behavior.

Command Line Options

The linker supports a plethora of command-line options, 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, supported 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 result of linking the file /lib/crt0.o with hello.o and the library libc.a, which will come from the standard search directories. (See the discussion of the `-l' option below.)

The command-line options to ld may be specified in any order, and may be repeated at will. Repeating most options with a different argument will either have no further effect, or override prior occurrences (those further to the left on the command line) of that option. Options which may be meaningfully specified more than once are noted in the descriptions below.

Non-option arguments are objects files which are to be linked together. They may follow, precede, or be mixed in with command-line options, except that an object file argument may not be placed between an option and its argument.

Usually the linker is invoked with at least one object file, but you can specify other forms of binary input files using `-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'.

If the linker can not recognize the format of an object file, it will assume that it is a linker script. A script specified in this way augments the main linker script used for the link (either the default linker script or the one specified by using `-T'). This feature permits the linker to link against a file which appears to be an object or an archive, but actually merely defines some symbol values, or uses INPUT or GROUP to load other objects. Note that specifying a script in this way should only be used to augment the main linker script; if you want to use some command that logically can only appear once, such as the SECTIONS or MEMORY command, you must replace the default linker script using the `-T' option. See section Command Language.

For options whose names are a single letter, option arguments must either follow the option letter without intervening whitespace, or be given as separate arguments immediately following the option that requires them.

For options whose names are multiple letters, either one dash or two can precede the option name; for example, `--oformat' and `--oformat' are equivalent. Arguments to multiple-letter options must either be separated from the option name by an equals sign, or be given as separate arguments immediately following the option that requires them. For example, `--oformat srec' and `--oformat=srec' are equivalent. Unique abbreviations of the names of multiple-letter options are accepted.

-akeyword

This option is supported for HP/UX compatibility. The keyword argument must be one of the strings `archive', `shared', or `default'. `-aarchive' is functionally equivalent to `-Bstatic', and the other two keywords are functionally equivalent to `-Bdynamic'. This option may be used any number of times.

-Aarchitecture

--architecture=architecture

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 identifies the particular architecture in the 960 family, enabling some safeguards and modifying the archive-library search path. See section ld and the Intel 960 family, for details. Future releases of ld may support similar functionality for other architecture families.

-b input-format

--format=input-format

ld may be configured to support more than one kind of object file. If your ld is configured this way, you can use the `-b' option to specify the binary format for input object files that follow this option on the command line. Even when ld is configured to support alternative object formats, you don't usually need to specify this, as ld should be configured 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 supported by the BFD libraries. (You can list the available binary formats with `objdump -i'.) See section BFD. 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. See section Environment Variables. You can also define the input format from a script, using the command TARGET; see section Option Commands.

-c MRI-commandfile

--mri-script=MRI-commandfile

For compatibility with linkers produced by MRI, ld accepts script files written in an alternate, restricted command language, described in section MRI Compatible Script Files. Introduce MRI script files with the option `-c'; use the `-T' option to run linker scripts written in the general-purpose ld scripting language. If MRI-cmdfile does not exist, ld looks for it in the directories specified by any `-L' options.

-d

-dc

-dp

These three options are equivalent; multiple forms are supported for compatibility with other linkers. They assign space to common symbols even if a relocatable output file is specified (with `-r'). The script command FORCE_COMMON_ALLOCATION has the same effect. See section Option Commands.

-e entry

--entry=entry

Use entry as the explicit symbol for beginning execution of your program, rather than the default entry point. See section The Entry Point, for a discussion of defaults and other ways of specifying the entry point.

-E

--export-dynamic

When creating a dynamically linked executable, add all symbols to the dynamic symbol table. The dynamic symbol table is the set of symbols which are visible from dynamic objects at run time. If you do not use this option, the dynamic symbol table will normally contain only those symbols which are referenced by some dynamic object mentioned in the link. If you use dlopen to load a dynamic object which needs to refer back to the symbols defined by the program, rather than some other dynamic object, then you will probably need to use this option when linking the program itself.

-f

--auxiliary name

When creating an ELF shared object, set the internal DT_AUXILIARY field to the specified name. This tells the dynamic linker that the symbol table of the shared object should be used as an auxiliary filter on the symbol table of the shared object name. If you later link a program against this filter object, then, when you run the program, the dynamic linker will see the DT_AUXILIARY field. If the dynamic linker resolves any symbols from the filter object, it will first check whether there is a definition in the shared object name. If there is one, it will be used instead of the definition in the filter object. The shared object name need not exist. Thus the shared object name may be used to provide an alternative implementation of certain functions, perhaps for debugging or for machine specific performance. This option may be specified more than once. The DT_AUXILIARY entries will be created in the order in which they appear on the command line.

-F name

--filter name

When creating an ELF shared object, set the internal DT_FILTER field to the specified name. This tells the dynamic linker that the symbol table of the shared object which is being created should be used as a filter on the symbol table of the shared object name. If you later link a program against this filter object, then, when you run the program, the dynamic linker will see the DT_FILTER field. The dynamic linker will resolve symbols according to the symbol table of the filter object as usual, but it will actually link to the definitions found in the shared object name. Thus the filter object can be used to select a subset of the symbols provided by the object name. Some older linkers used the -F option throughout a compilation toolchain for specifying object-file format for both input and output object files. The GNU linker uses other mechanisms for this purpose: the -b, --format, --oformat options, the TARGET command in linker scripts, and the GNUTARGET environment variable. The GNU linker will ignore the -F option when not creating an ELF shared object.

--force-exe-suffix

Make sure that an output file has a .exe suffix. If a successfully built fully linked output file does not have a .exe or .dll suffix, this option forces the linker to copy the output file to one of the same name with a .exe suffix. This option is useful when using unmodified Unix makefiles on a Microsoft Windows host, since some versions of Windows won't run an image unless it ends in a .exe suffix.

-g

Ignored. Provided for compatibility with other tools.

-Gvalue

--gpsize=value

Set the maximum size of objects to be optimized using the GP register to size. This is only meaningful for object file formats such as MIPS ECOFF which supports putting large and small objects into different sections. This is ignored for other object file formats.

-hname

-soname=name

When creating an ELF shared object, set the internal DT_SONAME field to the specified name. When an executable is linked with a shared object which has a DT_SONAME field, then when the executable is run the dynamic linker will attempt to load the shared object specified by the DT_SONAME field rather than the using the file name given to the linker.

-i

Perform an incremental link (same as option `-r').

-larchive

--library=archive

Add archive file archive 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 libarchive.a for every archive specified. On systems which support shared libraries, ld may also search for libraries with extensions other than .a. Specifically, on ELF and SunOS systems, ld will search a directory for a library with an extension of .so before searching for one with an extension of .a. By convention, a .so extension indicates a shared library. The linker will search an archive only once, at the location where it is specified on the command line. If the archive defines a symbol which was undefined in some object which appeared before the archive on the command line, the linker will include the appropriate file(s) from the archive. However, an undefined symbol in an object appearing later on the command line will not cause the linker to search the archive again. See the -( option for a way to force the linker to search archives multiple times. You may list the same archive multiple times on the command line. This type of archive searching is standard for Unix linkers. However, if you are using ld on AIX, note that it is different from the behaviour of the AIX linker.

-Lsearchdir

--library-path=searchdir

Add path searchdir to the list of paths that ld will search for archive libraries and ld control scripts. You may use this option any number of times. The directories are searched in the order in which they are specified on the command line. Directories specified on the command line are searched before the default directories. All -L options apply to all -l options, regardless of the order in which the options appear. The default set of paths searched (without being specified with `-L') depends on which emulation mode ld is using, and in some cases also on how it was configured. See section Environment Variables. The paths can also be specified in a link script with the SEARCH_DIR command. Directories specified this way are searched at the point in which the linker script appears in the command line.

-memulation

Emulate the emulation linker. You can list the available emulations with the `--verbose' or `-V' options. If the `-m' option is not used, the emulation is taken from the LDEMULATION environment variable, if that is defined. Otherwise, the default emulation depends upon how the linker was configured.

-M

--print-map

Print a link map to the standard output. A link map provides information about the link, including the following:

• Where object files and symbols are mapped into memory.
• How common symbols are allocated.
• All archive members included in the link, with a mention of the symbol which caused the archive member to be brought in.

-n

--nmagic

Set the text segment to be read only, and mark the output as NMAGIC if possible.

-N

--omagic

Set the text and data sections to be readable and writable. Also, do not page-align the data segment. If the output format supports Unix style magic numbers, mark the output as OMAGIC.

-o output

--output=output

Use output as the 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 also specify the output file name.

-r

--relocateable

Generate 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; to do that, use `-Ur'. This option does the same thing as `-i'.

-R filename

--just-symbols=filename

Read symbol names and their addresses from filename, but do not relocate it or include it in the output. This allows your output file to refer symbolically to absolute locations of memory defined in other programs. You may use this option more than once. For compatibility with other ELF linkers, if the -R option is followed by a directory name, rather than a file name, it is treated as the -rpath option.

-s

--strip-all

Omit all symbol information from the output file.

-S

--strip-debug

Omit debugger symbol information (but not all symbols) from the output file.

-t

--trace

Print the names of the input files as ld processes them.

-T commandfile

--script=commandfile

Read link commands from the file commandfile. These commands replace ld's default link script (rather than adding to it), so commandfile must specify everything necessary to describe the target format. You must use this option if you want to use a command which can only appear once in a linker script, such as the SECTIONS or MEMORY command. See section Command Language. If commandfile does not exist, ld looks for it in the directories specified by any preceding `-L' options. Multiple `-T' options accumulate.

-u symbol

--undefined=symbol

Force symbol to be entered in the output file as an undefined symbol. Doing this may, for example, trigger linking of additional modules from standard libraries. `-u' may be repeated with different option arguments to enter additional undefined symbols.

-v

--version

-V

Display the version number for ld. The -V option also lists the supported emulations.

-x

--discard-all

Delete all local symbols.

-X

--discard-locals

Delete all temporary local symbols. For most targets, this is all local symbols whose names begin with `L'.

-y symbol

--trace-symbol=symbol

Print the name of each linked file in which symbol appears. This option may be given any number of times. On many systems it is necessary to prepend an underscore. This option is useful when you have an undefined symbol in your link but don't know where the reference is coming from.

-Y path

Add path to the default library search path. This option exists for Solaris compatibility.

-z keyword

This option is ignored for Solaris compatibility.

-( archives -)

--start-group archives --end-group

The archives should be a list of archive files. They may be either explicit file names, or `-l' options. The specified archives are searched repeatedly until no new undefined references are created. Normally, an archive is searched only once in the order that it is specified on the command line. If a symbol in that archive is needed to resolve an undefined symbol referred to by an object in an archive that appears later on the command line, the linker would not be able to resolve that reference. By grouping the archives, they all be searched repeatedly until all possible references are resolved. Using this option has a significant performance cost. It is best to use it only when there are unavoidable circular references between two or more archives.

-assert keyword

This option is ignored for SunOS compatibility.

-Bdynamic

-dy

-call_shared

Link against dynamic libraries. This is only meaningful on platforms for which shared libraries are supported. This option is normally the default on such platforms. The different variants of this option are for compatibility with various systems. You may use this option multiple times on the command line: it affects library searching for -l options which follow it.

-Bstatic

-dn

-non_shared

-static

Do not link against shared libraries. This is only meaningful on platforms for which shared libraries are supported. The different variants of this option are for compatibility with various systems. You may use this option multiple times on the command line: it affects library searching for -l options which follow it.

-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 option is only meaningful on ELF platforms which support shared libraries.

--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. The format of the table is intentionally simple, so that it may be easily processed by a script if necessary. The symbols are printed out, sorted by name. For each symbol, a list of file names is given. If the symbol is defined, the first file listed is the location of the definition. The remaining files contain references to the symbol.

--defsym symbol=expression

Create a global symbol in the output file, containing 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 expression in this context: you may give a hexadecimal constant or the name of an existing symbol, or use + and - to add or subtract hexadecimal constants or symbols. If you need more elaborate expressions, consider using the linker command language from a script (see section Assignment: Defining Symbols). Note: there should be no white space between symbol, the equals sign ("="), and expression.

--dynamic-linker file

Set the name of the dynamic linker. This is only meaningful when generating dynamically linked ELF executables. The default dynamic linker is normally correct; don't use this unless you know what you are doing.

-EB

Link big-endian objects. This affects the default output format.

-EL

Link little-endian objects. This affects the default output format.

--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 causes the linker to create a table which may be used at runtime to relocate any data which was statically initialized to pointer values. See the code in testsuite/ld-empic for details.

--help

Print a summary of the command-line options on the standard output and exit.

-Map mapfile

Print a link map to the file mapfile. See the description of the `-M' option, above.

--no-keep-memory

ld normally optimizes for speed over memory usage by caching the symbol tables of input files in memory. This option tells ld to instead optimize for memory usage, by rereading the symbol tables as necessary. This may be required if ld runs out of memory space while linking a large executable.

--no-warn-mismatch

Normally ld will give an error if you try to link together input files that are mismatched for some reason, perhaps because they have been compiled for different processors or for different endiannesses. This option tells ld that it should silently permit such possible errors. This option should only be used with care, in cases when you have taken some special action that ensures that the linker errors are inappropriate.

--no-whole-archive

Turn off the effect of the --whole-archive option for subsequent archive files.

--noinhibit-exec

Retain the executable output file whenever it is still usable. Normally, the linker will not produce an output file if it encounters errors during the link process; it exits without writing an output file when it issues any error whatsoever.

--oformat output-format

ld may be configured to support more than one kind of object file. If your ld is configured this way, you can use the `--oformat' option to specify the binary format for the output object file. Even when ld is configured to support alternative object formats, you don't usually need to specify this, as ld should be configured to produce as a default output format the most usual format on each machine. output-format is a text string, the name of a particular format supported by the BFD libraries. (You can list the available binary formats with `objdump -i'.) The script command OUTPUT_FORMAT can also specify the output format, but this option overrides it. See section BFD.

-qmagic

This option is ignored for Linux compatibility.

-Qy

This option is ignored for SVR4 compatibility.

--relax

An option with machine dependent effects. This option is only supported on a few targets. See section ld and the H8/300. See section ld and the Intel 960 family. On some platforms, the `--relax' option performs global optimizations that become possible when the linker resolves addressing in the program, such as relaxing address modes and synthesizing new instructions in the output object file. On platforms where this is not supported, `--relax' is accepted, but ignored.

--retain-symbols-file filename

Retain only the symbols listed in the file filename, discarding all others. filename is simply a flat file, with one symbol name per line. This option is especially useful in environments (such as VxWorks) where a large global symbol table is accumulated gradually, to conserve run-time memory. `--retain-symbols-file' does not discard undefined symbols, or symbols needed for relocations. You may only specify `--retain-symbols-file' once in the command line. It overrides `-s' and `-S'.

-rpath dir

Add a directory to the runtime library search path. This is used when linking an ELF executable with shared objects. All -rpath arguments are concatenated and passed to the runtime linker, which uses them to locate shared objects at runtime. The -rpath option is also used when locating shared objects 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 environment 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 options, ignoring the -L options. This can be useful when using gcc, which adds many -L options which may be on NFS mounted filesystems. For compatibility with other ELF linkers, if the -R option is followed by a directory name, rather than a file name, it is treated as the -rpath option.

-rpath-link DIR

When using ELF or SunOS, one shared library may require 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 library and include it in the link, if it is not included explicitly. In such a case, the -rpath-link option specifies the first set of directories to search. The -rpath-link option may specify a sequence of directory names either by specifying a list of names separated by colons, or by appearing multiple times. The linker uses the following search paths to locate required shared libraries.

1. Any directories specified by -rpath-link options.
2. Any directories specified by -rpath options. The difference between -rpath and -rpath-link is that directories specified by -rpath options are included in the executable and used at runtime, whereas the -rpath-link option is only effective at link time.
3. On an ELF system, if the -rpath and rpath-link options were not used, search the contents of the environment variable LD_RUN_PATH.
4. On SunOS, if the -rpath option was not used, search any directories specified using -L options.
5. For a native linker, the contents of the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
6. The default directories, normally `/lib' and `/usr/lib'.

If the required shared library is not found, the linker will issue a warning and continue with the link.

-shared

-Bshareable

Create a shared library. This is currently only supported on ELF, XCOFF and SunOS platforms. On SunOS, the linker will automatically create a shared library if the -e option is not used and there are undefined symbols in the link.

--sort-common

This option tells ld to sort the common symbols by size when it places them in the appropriate output sections. First come all the one byte symbols, then all the two bytes, then all the four bytes, and then everything else. This is to prevent gaps between symbols due to alignment constraints.

--split-by-file

Similar to --split-by-reloc but creates a new output section for each input file.

--split-by-reloc count

Trys to creates extra sections in the output file so that no single output section in the file contains 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 linker will not split up individual input sections for redistribution, so if a single input section contains more than count relocations one output section will contain that many relocations.

--stats

Compute and display statistics about the operation of the linker, such as execution time and memory usage.

--traditional-format

For some targets, the output of ld is different in some ways from the output of some existing linker. This switch requests ld to use the traditional format instead. For example, on SunOS, ld combines duplicate entries in the symbol string table. This can reduce the size of an output file with full debugging information by over 30 percent. Unfortunately, the SunOS dbx program can not read the resulting program (gdb has no trouble). The `--traditional-format' switch tells ld to not combine duplicate entries.

-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. org must be a single hexadecimal integer; for compatibility with other linkers, you may omit the leading `0x' usually associated with hexadecimal values.

-Ur

For anything other than C++ programs, this option is equivalent to `-r': it generates relocatable output--i.e., an output file that can in turn serve as input to ld. When linking C++ programs, `-Ur' does resolve references to constructors, unlike `-r'. It does not work to use `-Ur' on files that were themselves linked with `-Ur'; once the constructor table has been built, it cannot be added to. Use `-Ur' only for the last partial link, and `-r' for the others.

--verbose

Display the version number for ld and list the linker emulations supported. Display which input files can and cannot be opened. Display the linker script if using a default builtin script.

--version-script=version-scriptfile

Specify the name of a version script to the linker. This is typically used when creating shared libraries to specify additional information about the version heirarchy for the library being created. This option is only meaningful on ELF platforms which support shared libraries. See section Version Script.

--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. Unfortunately, some C libraries use this practice, so you may get some warnings about symbols in the libraries as well as in your programs. There are three kinds of global symbols, illustrated here by C examples:

`int i = 1;'

A definition, which goes in the initialized data section of the output file.

`extern int i;'

An undefined reference, which does not allocate space. There must be either a definition or a common symbol for the variable somewhere.

`int i;'

A common symbol. If there are only (one or more) common symbols for a variable, it goes in the uninitialized data area of the output file. The linker merges multiple common symbols for the same variable into a single symbol. If they are of different sizes, it picks the largest size. The linker turns a common symbol into a declaration, if there is a definition of the same variable.

The `--warn-common' option can produce five kinds of warnings. Each warning consists of a pair of lines: the first describes the symbol just encountered, and the second describes the previous symbol encountered with the same name. One or both of the two symbols will be a common symbol.

1. Turning a common symbol into a reference, because there is already a definition for the symbol.

   file(section): warning: common of `symbol'
      overridden by definition
   file(section): warning: defined here
   

2. Turning a common symbol into a reference, because a later definition for the symbol is encountered. This is the same as the previous case, except that the symbols are encountered in a different order.

   file(section): warning: definition of `
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