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- This package contains my shared, dynamic linker (ld.so) and utilities
- (ldconfig and ldd) for Linux.
-
- For those that were not involved in the development of ld.so, its main
- feature is that the user-level, shared library and dynamic linking
- support has been moved to its own, special shared library. This has
- two significant advantages. First, the startup code for all binaries,
- which must be linked statically, is reduced by about 2.5k. Second,
- and probably more important, the shared library and dynamic linking
- support can be upgraded for all binaries without having to relink by
- simply installing a new ld.so.
-
- In addition to ld.so, this package also includes two, related
- utilities, ldconfig and ldd. Ldconfig is used to automatically update
- symbolic links to shared libraries and build the library cache used by
- ld.so. This should hopefully put an end to the common problem of
- accidentally deleting a critical library link (eg. /lib/libc.so.4).
- Ldd is used to list the shared libraries dependencies for a binary.
-
- Please see the included manual pages for further details.
-
- To install, simply run "sh instldso.sh" as root. Ready-to-go versions
- of all end-products are provided so nothing should need to be compiled
- or linked.
-
- Notable contributors to this package include Eric Youngdale, Peter
- MacDonald, Hongjiu Lu, Linus Torvalds, Lars Wirzenius, Mitch D'Souza
- and Rik Faith (not necessarily in that order).
-
- Changes in version 1.5.2:
-
- More ELF changes (Mitch D'Souza).
-
- Changed ldconfig to also update the link for ld-linux.so.
-
- Changes in version 1.5.1:
-
- More ELF and LD_PRELOAD changes (Mitch D'Souza).
-
- Changes in version 1.5.0:
-
- Chnaged all executables to QMAGIC (Mitch D'Souza and Rick
- Sladkey).
-
- Added preliminary support for ELF to ldd and ldconfig (Eric
- Youndale and H.J. Lu).
-
- Added support for LD_PRELOAD to ld.so (Mitch D'Souza).
-
- Removed the "advertising" clause from the copyright notices
- in all source files.
-
- Changes in version 1.4.4:
-
- Changed ldconfig to support QMAGIC libraries.
-
- Fixed a bug in ld.so where some of the error messages had
- transposed arguments.
-
- Changes in version 1.4.3:
-
- Fixed an obscure bug in ld.so where an index was not being
- incremented when a library was not found using the cache.
-
- Changes in version 1.4.2:
-
- Changed ldconfig to issue a warning and continue instead
- of an error and exiting when a link can't be updated.
- This is useful when some libraries are imported on read-
- only file systems, such as an NFS mounted /usr.
-
- Changed ld.so to be more robust in searching for libraries.
- A library is not considered found unless it can actually be
- loaded. If a library is not found using the cache, the
- standard directories are searched as in pre-cache versions.
-
- Changes in version 1.4.1:
-
- Fixed minor Makefile problems.
-
- Added support for linux-68k.
-
- Fixed a bug in ld.so where libraries with absolute paths
- were not handled correctly.
-
- Changed ld.so to ignore the directory in the names of
- shared libraries by default. This allows older libraries
- with absolute paths, such as the XView libraries, to take
- advantage of the cache support.
-
- Added a minimal usage message to ldconfig.
-
- Changes in version 1.4:
-
- Fixed bug in ld.so where minor version numbers were not
- reported correctly when a minor version incompatibility
- was found.
-
- Fixed bug in ldconfig where libraries with subversion
- numbers greater than 9 were not compared correctly.
-
- Added Mitch D'Souza's support for suppressing warning
- messages from ld.so about minor version incompatibilities.
-
- Added Mitch D'Souza's support for using a cache to speed
- up searching for libraries in the standard directories.
-
- Added Mitch D'Souza's support for a debugging version of
- ld.so. Link with -lldso if you think you are experiencing
- dynamic linker problems.
-
- Changes in version 1.3:
-
- Added support for libraries using absolute pathnames. If I
- had known that the XView libraries used them, I would have
- added this earlier.
-
- Fixed a bug handling old libraries using a pathname beginning
- with '/' or '/lib/'.
-
- Changes in version 1.2a:
-
- Fixed a minor bug in ldd which caused all files, specifically
- scripts, to be recognized as binaries. Thanks to Olaf Flebbe
- for reporting it.
-
- David Engel
- david@ods.com
-