An approach to genuine dynamic linking

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Abstract
This paper describes a new approach to dynamic link/unlink editing. The basis of this approach is a library of link editing functions that can add compiled object code to or remove such code from a process any time during its execution. Loading modules, searching libraries, resolving external references, and allocating storage for global and static data structures are all performed at run time. This approach provides the efficiency of native machine code execution along with the flexibility to modify a program during its execution, thereby making many new applications possible. This paper also describes three sample applications of these dynamic link editing functions: program customization, incremental program development, and support for debugging and testing. A prototype of this approach is implemented under UNIX as a library package called dld for the C programming language and is available for VAX, Sun 3 and SPARCstation machines.

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