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Oracle Solaris 11.1 Linkers and Libraries Guide     Oracle Solaris 11.1 Information Library
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Document Information

Preface

Part I Using the Link-Editor and Runtime Linker

1.  Introduction to the Oracle Solaris Link Editors

2.  Link-Editor

3.  Runtime Linker

4.  Shared Objects

Part II Quick Reference

5.  Link-Editor Quick Reference

Part III Advanced Topics

6.  Direct Bindings

7.  Building Objects to Optimize System Performance

8.  Mapfiles

9.  Interfaces and Versioning

Interface Compatibility

Internal Versioning

Creating a Version Definition

Creating a Weak Version Definition

Defining Unrelated Interfaces

Binding to a Version Definition

Verifying Versions in Additional Objects

Specifying a Version Binding

Binding to Additional Version Definitions

Version Stability

Relocatable Objects

External Versioning

Coordination of Versioned Filenames

Multiple External Versioned Files in the Same Process

10.  Establishing Dependencies with Dynamic String Tokens

11.  Extensibility Mechanisms

Part IV ELF Application Binary Interface

12.  Object File Format

13.  Program Loading and Dynamic Linking

14.  Thread-Local Storage

Part V Appendices

A.  Linker and Libraries Updates and New Features

B.  System V Release 4 (Version 1) Mapfiles

Index

Interface Compatibility

Many types of change can be made to an object. In their simplest terms, these changes can be categorized into one of two groups.

The following table categorizes some common object changes.

Table 9-1 Examples of Interface Compatibility

Object Change
Update Type
The addition of a symbol
Compatible
The removal of a symbol
Incompatible
The addition of an argument to a non-variadic function
Incompatible
The removal of an argument from a function
Incompatible
The change of size, or content, of a data item to a function or as an external definition
Incompatible
A bug fix, or internal enhancement to a function, providing the semantic properties of the object remain unchanged
Compatible
A bug fix, or internal enhancement to a function when the semantic properties of the object change
Incompatible

Note - Because of interposition, the addition of a symbol can constitute an incompatible update. The new symbol might conflict with an applications use of that symbol. However, this form of incompatibility does seem rare in practice as source-level namespace management is commonly used.


Compatible updates can be accommodated by maintaining version definitions that are internal to the object being generated. Incompatible updates can be accommodated by producing a new object with a new external versioned name. Both of these versioning techniques enable the selective binding of applications. These techniques also enable verification of correct version binding at runtime. These two techniques are explored in more detail in the following sections.