Dynamic Shared Objects

Dynamic Shared Objects

IRIX uses shared objects called Dynamic Shared Objects, or DSOs. The object code of a DSO is position-independent code (PIC), which can be mapped into the virtual address space of several different processes at once. DSOs are loaded at run time instead of at linking time, by the run-time loader, rld. As is true for static shared libraries, the code for DSOs is not included in executable files; thus, executables built with DSOs are smaller than those built with non-shared libraries, and multiple programs may use the same DSO at the same time. For more information on DSOs, see Chapter 3, "Using Dynamic Shared Objects."

Static shared libraries are only supported under this release for the purposes of running old (COFF) binaries. The current compiler system has no facilities for generating static shared libraries.