32–Bit and 64–Bit Environments

The link-editors operate on 32–bit objects, and on SPARCV9 systems are also capable of operating on 64–bit objects. On SPARC systems, the 64–bit link-editor (ld(1)) is capable of generating 32–bit objects and the 32–bit link-editor is capable of generating 64–bit objects. In the latter case, the size of the generated object, not including the .bss, is restricted to 2 Gbytes.

No command-line option is required to distinguish a 32–bit or 64–bit link-edit. The link-editor uses the ELF class of the first input relocatable object file it sees on the command-line to govern the mode in which it will operate. Specialized link-edits, such as linking solely from a mapfile or an archive library, are uninfluenced by their input files, and will default to a 32–bit mode. In these cases a 64–bit link-edit can be enforced with the -64 option. Intermixing of 32–bit and 64–bit objects is not permitted.

The operations of the link-editors on 32–bit and 64–bit objects is identical. This document typically uses 32–bit examples. Cases where 64–bit processing differs from the 32–bit processing are highlighted.

For more information regarding 64–bit applications, refer to the Solaris 64-bit Developer's Guide.