HP-UX 11i Release Notes (December 2000)

Programming
Changes to the linker/dld Interface
Chapter 13242
Changes to the linker/dld Interface
Patches to the linker/dld interface include the following
enhancements:
• Added support for the CXperf performance measuring tool in both
32-bit and 64-bitversions of the ld command.Both versions recognize
the +tools option, which enables CXperf information to be
propagated to an executable program; see “CXperf Performance
Monitoring Support” in Chapter 7 for information on CXperf.
• Added support for huge data (.bss > 4GB)
• A defect was repaired whereby +Oprocelim removed more than it
should have causing a runtime error.
• Performance shows a definite improvement:
— 32-bit ld: approximately 30% link time improvement
— 64-bit ld: approximately 8% link time improvement
• Support OBJDEBUG architecture in both 32-bit and 64-bit linker.
• Added support for executable stack.
• Added global symbol table support.
• Added support for object code repository reuse.
Neither functionality nor compatibility are affected by the code changes.
However, for 64-bit programs, mixing object files having non-weakorder
sections with object files having weakorder sections might cause the
ordering of text sections to change.
The new version of the linker requires 34112 blocks.