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author | David 'Digit' Turner <digit@google.com> | 2009-05-18 14:37:41 +0200 |
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committer | David 'Digit' Turner <digit@google.com> | 2009-05-26 11:16:28 +0200 |
commit | 8215679b355efe3829bab571bd566dc818ea4ccc (patch) | |
tree | 2f69e2ec0c696c19668f8f05ec91b50ad24ebecd /linker/README.TXT | |
parent | e5446feb21a991426fb683d077a1a8ca5831ac0f (diff) | |
download | bionic-8215679b355efe3829bab571bd566dc818ea4ccc.zip bionic-8215679b355efe3829bab571bd566dc818ea4ccc.tar.gz bionic-8215679b355efe3829bab571bd566dc818ea4ccc.tar.bz2 |
Fix the parsing of the .fini_array in the dynamic linker (it should happen in reverse order).
Also add a small design overview document for the linker. The latter contains details on
how the initialization/finalization is supposed to work.
Diffstat (limited to 'linker/README.TXT')
-rw-r--r-- | linker/README.TXT | 114 |
1 files changed, 114 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/linker/README.TXT b/linker/README.TXT new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4fff14e --- /dev/null +++ b/linker/README.TXT @@ -0,0 +1,114 @@ +Android Dynamic Linker Design Notes +=================================== + +Introduction: +------------- + +This document provides several notes related to the design of the Android +dynamic linker. + + +Prelinking: +----------- + +System libraries in Android are internally prelinked, which means that +any internal relocations within them are stripped from the corresponding +shared object, in order to reduce size and speed up loading. + +Such libraries can only be loaded at the very specific virtual memory address +they have been prelinked to (during the build process). The list of prelinked +system libraries and their corresponding virtual memory address is found in +the file: + + build/core/prelink-linux-<arch>.map + +It should be updated each time a new system library is added to the +system. + +The prelink step happens at build time, and uses the 'soslim' and 'apriori' +tools: + + - 'apriori' is the real prelink tool which removes relocations from the + shared object, however, it must be given a list of symbols to remove + from the file. + + - 'soslim' is used to find symbols in an executable ELF file + and generate a list that can be passed to 'apriori'. + +By default, these tools are only used to remove internal symbols from +libraries, though they have been designed to allow more aggressive +optimizations (e.g. 'global' prelinking and symbol stripping, which +prevent replacing individual system libraries though). + +You can disable prelinking at build time by modifying your Android.mk with +a line like: + + LOCAL_PRELINK_MODULE := false + + +Initialization and Termination functions: +----------------------------------------- + +The Unix Sys V Binary Interface standard states that an +executable can have the following entries in its .dynamic +section: + + DT_INIT + Points to the address of an initialization function + that must be called when the file is loaded. + + DT_INIT_ARRAY + Points to an array of function addresses that must be + called, in-order, to perform initialization. Some of + the entries in the array can be 0 or -1, and should + be ignored. + + Note: this is generally stored in a .init_array section + + DT_INIT_ARRAYSZ + The size of the DT_INITARRAY, if any + + DT_FINI + Points to the address of a finalization function which + must be called when the file is unloaded or the process + terminated. + + DT_FINI_ARRAY + Same as DT_INITARRAY but for finalizers. Note that the + functions must be called in reverse-order though + + Note: this is generally stroed in a .fini_array section + + DT_FINI_ARRAYSZ + Size of FT_FINIARRAY + + DT_PREINIT_ARRAY + An array similar to DT_INIT_ARRAY which must *only* be + present in executables, not shared libraries, which contains + a list of functions that need to be called before any other + initialization function (i.e. DT_INIT and/or DT_INIT_ARRAY) + + Note: this is generally stroed in a .preinit_array section + + DT_PREINIT_ARRAYSZ + The size of DT_PREINIT_ARRAY + +If both a DT_INIT and DT_INITARRAY entry are present, the DT_INIT +function must be called before the DT_INITARRAY functions. + +Consequently, the DT_FINIARRAY must be parsed in reverse order before +the DT_FINI function, if both are available. + +Note that the implementation of static C++ constructors is very +much processor dependent, and may use different ELF sections. + +On the ARM (see "C++ ABI for ARM" document), the static constructors +must be called explicitely from the DT_INIT_ARRAY, and each one of them +shall register a destructor by calling the special __eabi_atexit() +function (provided by the C library). The DT_FINI_ARRAY is not used +by static C++ destructors. + +On x86, the lists of constructors and destructors are placed in special +sections named ".ctors" and ".dtors", and the DT_INIT / DT_FINI functions +are in charge of calling them explicitely. + |